The Ministry of Railways has proposed increasing the share of freight movement through rail by 1.5 times under the draft National Rail Plan. Under the proposed goals, the Indian Railways aims to have 45 per cent share in India's total freight movement by 2030. This is a steep increase from the existing 27 per cent share. The plan also proposes to eliminate waiting lists in passenger trains by augmenting running of trains.
National Rail Plan
“We are using Artificial intelligence to assess demand and would want to augment rail movement towards meeting this demand. The passenger train movement can be aligned to the demand to eliminate waiting lists. We want to ensure that all passengers get confirmed tickets,” Railway Board Chairman, Vinod Kumar Yadav told reporters.
“We will be developing railway infrastructure in such a way that the capacity will exceed demand. We have to develop capacity beyond demand. This has been the thought behind planning for the last two years. The final draft of the National Rail Plan reflects the same. Comments are invited on it for one month,” he said.
“This is the first time that the business plan and the infrastructure development plan of the Indian Railways is being jointly planned and developed on a single platform,” he added.
“The total freight movement in the ecosystem during 2019 was estimated at 4,700 million tonnes of this the Indian Railways ferried 1210 million tonnes. It is estimated that the freight ecosystem will grow to 6400 million tonnes by 2026,” Yadav said.
Vision 2024
In addition to the longer-term goals under the National Rail Plan, there are more immediate targets specified under Vision 2024, including the planned augmentation of rail infrastructure to enable loading of 2024 million tonnes freight by the year 2024.
Other goals under Vision 2024 include multi-tracking of 16,373 kilometres (balance length - 12,945 km), 58 Super Critical Projects (3750 km), 68 Critical Projects (6913 km), and 20 additional coal connectivity projects (2,184 km) (balance – 1508 km). The financing for these projects has been lined up and funds have been allocated by the Indian Railways till 2024. The total capital expenditure envisaged for this is Rs 2.9 trillion.
According to Yadav, the National Rail Plan aims to create capacity by 2030 which will be ahead of demand till 2050.
Post-Covid scenario for railways
Commenting on the current status of freight movement which was severely hampered because of Covid-19 lockdowns, Yadav said that cumulative freight loading till December 16, 2020 has reached 97 per cent of last year levels.
Responding to queries on when normalcy will resume in rail operations, Yadav said, “We are gradually moving towards normalcy in a phased manner, while being in coordination with the states, while keeping the Covid-19 precautions in place. But giving a definite timeline for all trains to begin operations is not possible at this moment.”
“We are running trains wherever we get a go ahead from state governments. But things are far from normal with occupancy not being very good in 30 to 40 per cent of the 1089 Specials trains that are currently being operated,” he said.
Commenting on the impact of Covid-19 on the revenue position of the Indian Railways, Yadav said, “Loading in freight trains this year has reached 97 per cent of last year levels, there is also an 8 per cent growth in revenue from freight operations. Going by the current trend, we expect train loading and freight revenue to be more than last year. The revenue deficit this year, compared to the last is at 10 per cent…there is a revenue loss of Rs 9,000 crore till now.”
“The loss we face is on passenger revenue where earnings stood at Rs 53,000 crore last financial year (2019-2020). This year the earning from passenger revenue is just Rs 4,600 crore, this is 87 per cent lower than last year. We expect passenger revenue to climb to Rs 15,000 crore by the end of the year. So, earnings from passenger revenue will be muted this fiscal,” he added.
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