By Express News Service
NEW DELHI: Keeping in mind the emerging requirements and developments of railways till 2050, the Centre has prepared a holistic National Rail Plan for India-2030 (NRP). The implementation of the plan will make the railways a ‘future ready’ system by 2030.
Under the plan, the Railways will be made capable of meeting all the requirements of passengers with a world-class benchmark in services.
Sharing this information in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha, Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Friday spelt out the objectives of the NRP and said its basic objective is to create a holistic development of Indian Railways. The aim is to create capacity ahead of demand, which in turn, would also cater to future growth in demand right up to 2050, the minister said.
“The NRP is also aimed at formulating strategies based on both operational capacities and commercial policy initiatives to increase the modal share of the Railways in frights to 45%”, Vaishnaw further said.
On the other salient features of the NRP, the minister said as Indian Railways is the growth engine of the nation, the NRP has also been prepared to reform the railways to make it more efficient, greener and modern to ensure cheaper, safe, and assured mode of transport to the common man — be it in passenger or freight segment.
The railways would take all efforts to reduce the transit time of freight substantially with an average speed of freight trains to 50 km/ph, he added.
“Under this plan, the railways would continue identifying new Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFC), the new High-Speed Railway Corridors and eliminating all the unmanned railway level crossings”, the railway minister said.
Other prominent objectives of NRP would be to study the railway infrastructure deficiencies, future infrastructure requirements, explore options, prioritization of projects, and assessment of funding requirements and financing strategies.
The Minister further informed the Rajya Sabha that the Ministry of Railways has decided to undertake a survey and prepare the Detail Project Report (DPR) of seven high-speed rail corridors namely Delhi-Varanasi, Delhi-Amritsar, Delhi-Ahmedabad, Mumbai-Nagapur, Mumbai-Hyderabad, Chennai-Bengaluru-Mysuru, and Varanasi-Howrah.
He said that Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed rail is the only sanctioned such project in the country being executed with the technical and financial support of the government of Japan.
