Maligaon, March 30 (MExN): The Indian Railways have prepared a National Rail Plan (NRP) for India to create a ‘future ready’ Railway system by 2030. According to a statement from the Northeast Frontier Railways Chief Public Relations Officer Subhanan Chanda, 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.
The release stated that 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, it added.
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 130 kmph on all other Golden Quadrilateral-Golden Diagonal (GQ/GD) routes and elimination of all Level Crossings on all GQ/GD route, the release stated.
It also informed that the draft plan has been put up in the public domain through the Indian Railways website and is also being circulated amongst stakeholders for comments/remarks.
Implementation of the NRP has already commenced and the Railways has identified and prioritised a large number of projects designated as Super Critical, Critical and Coal/Port connectivity, for completion as per the Vision 2024 document which is a subset of the National Rail Plan, it added.
