With an aim to improve its modal share of its freight business to 45 per cent in the next 10 years from 27 per cent now, Indian Railways has come out with the draft National Rail Plan, 2030. A long-term strategic plan called the National Rail Plan is made to plan infrastructural capacity enhancement along with strategies to increase modal share of the Railways.
While spelling out the National Rail Plan, Railway Board Chairman Vinod Kumar Yadav said it will be a common platform for all future infrastructural, business and financial planning of the Railways. The plan is being circulated among various Ministries and other stakeholders for their views now and Railways aims to finalise the final plan by January 2021.
"The objective of the Plan is to create capacity ahead of demand by 2030, which in turn would cater to growth in demand right up to 2050 and also increase the modal share of Railways from 27 per cent currently to 45 per cent in freight by 2030 as part of a national commitment to reduce Carbon emission and to continue to sustain it. Net Zero Carbon emission by 2030," Yadav said while adding that national transporter aims to reduce overall cost of rail transportation by nearly 30 per cent and pass on the benefits to customers.
According to Railways, to assess the actual demand in freight and passenger sectors, a year-long survey was conducted over hundred representative locations by survey teams spread all over the country. And forecast growth of traffic in both freight and passenger year on year up to 2030 and on a decadal basis up to 2050.
Officials maintained that plan is to formulate strategies based on both operational capacities and commercial policy initiatives to increase modal share of the Railways in freight to 45 per cent by 2030. And reduce transit time of freight substantially by increasing average speed of freight trains from present 22 kmph to 50 kmph.
National Rail Plan is also to map the growth in demand on the Indian Railway route map and simulate the capacity behaviour of the network in future. "Select projects along with appropriate technology in both track work, signalling and rolling stock to mitigate these bottlenecks well in advance," Yadav added.
"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," an official added.
As a subset of draft plan, railway ministry has also prepared a vision plan for the next four years. The capital expenditure for this is ₹2.9 trillion. Vision 2024 has been launched for accelerated implementation of certain critical projects in next four years such as 100 per cent electrification, multitracking 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 Quadilateral-Golden Diagonal (GQ/GD) routes and elimination of all Level Crossings on all GQ/GD route, according to Indian Railways.
Railways said that future projects for implementation beyond 2024 in both track and signalling have been identified with clear cut timelines for implementation. Like, three Dedicated Freight Corridors, namely East Coast, East-West & North-South identified along with timelines. Preliminary Engineering-cum-Tramc Survey is already underway in this regard.
Besides, several new high speed rail corridors have also been identified. "Survey on Delhi-Varanasi High Speed Rail already under way," official said. Moreover, assessment of rolling stock requirement for passenger traffic as well as wagon requirement for freight and to assess locomotive requirement to meet twin objectives of 100 per cent electrification (Green Energy) by December 2023 and also the increasing traffic right up to 2030 and beyond up to 2050.
"For successful implementation of the National Rail Plan, the Railways will be looking to engage with Private Sector, PSUs, State Governments and Original Equipment Manufacturers(OEM)/Industries," Railways official statement said while adding that efforts are on to identify new streams of finance and models for financing including those based on PPP (Public-Private partnership).
Moreover, sustained involvement of the Private Sector in areas like operations and ownership of rolling stock, development of freight and passenger terminals, development and operations of track infrastructure.