India's National Rail Plan set to create a ‘future ready’ Railway system by 2030

New Delhi, India (Urban Transport News): Indian Railways have prepared a National Rail Plan (NRP) for India – 2030. The Plan is to create a ‘future ready’ Railway system by 2030. The NRP is aimed to formulate strategies based on both operational capacities and commercial policy initiatives to increase modal share of the Railways in freight to 45%.

The objective of the Plan is to create capacity ahead of demand, which in turn would also cater to future growth in demand right up to 2050 and also increase the modal share of Railways to 45% in freight traffic and to continue to sustain it. To achieve this objective all possible financial models including Public Private Partnership (PPP) are being considered.

As Indian Railways is the growth engine of the nation, NRP is aimed to reform Railways to make it more efficient, greener and modern which will translate into cheaper, safer and assured mode of transport to the common man be it in passenger or freight segment.

To achieve this objective, Ministry has identified some main features of the National Rail Plan. NRP will formulate strategies based on both operational capacities and commercial policy initiatives to increase modal share of the Railways in freight to 45%.

NRP will reduce transit time of freight substantially by increasing average speed of freight trains to 50Kmph.

As part of the National Rail Plan, Vision 2024 has been launched for accelerated implementation of certain critical projects by 2024 such as 100% electrification, multi-tracking of congested routes, upgradation of speed to 160 kmph on Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai routes, upgradation of speed to 130kmph on all other Golden Quadrilateral-Golden Diagonal (GQ/GD) routes and elimination of all Level Crossings on all GQ/GD route.

NRP will also Identify new Dedicated Freight Corridors, new High Speed Rail Corridors. It will asses rolling stock requirement for passenger traffic as well as wagon requirement for freight, assess Locomotive requirement to meet twin objectives of 100% electrification (Green Energy) and increasing freight modal share and assess the total investment in capital that would be required along with a periodical break up.

Sustained involvement of the Private Sector in areas like operations and ownership of rolling stock, development of freight and passenger terminals, development/operations of track infrastructure etc.