New Delhi: In an endeavour to address the inadequacies of capacity constraints and improve its modal share in total freight ecosystem of the country, Indian Railways has come up with Draft National Rail Plan. A long term strategic plan called the 'National Rail Plan' has been developed to plan infrastructural capacity enhancement along with strategies to increase the modal share of the Railways. The National Rail Plan will be a common platform for all future infrastructural, business and financial planning of the Railways. This plan is being circulated among various Ministries for their views now. Railways aim to finalise the Final plan by January 2021.
As part of the National Rail Plan, Vision 2024 has been launched for accelerated implementation of certain critical projects by 2024 such as 100 percent electrification, multi-tracking of congested routes, up-gradation of speed to 160 kmph on Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai routes, up-gradation 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.
In effect, the National Rail Plan envisages an initial surge in capital investment right up to 2030 to create capacity ahead of demand and increase the modal share of the Railways in freight by 45percent.
Post 2030, the revenue surplus generated would be adequate to finance future capital investment and also take the burden of debt service ratio of the capital already invested. Exchequer funding of Rail projects would not be required.
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