Highlights from Railway Budget 2014-15

July 9, 2014

Union Railway Minister D.V. Sadananda Gowda presented his first Railway Budget in Parliament. Below are the highlights of this Budget:

No new hike in passenger fares and freight charges
Bullet train in Mumbai-Ahmedabad sector
Diamond quadrilateral for high speed trains
Proposal to enhance speed of trains to 160-200 km/hr in 9 sectors
Online booking to support 7,200 tickets/minute; to enable 1.2 lakh users log in simultaneously
Revamp of reservation system, ticket-booking through mobile phones, post offices to be promoted
Online platform for unreserved tickets
Stations to have Combo parking-platform tickets
Women RPF Constables to escort ladies coaches; 4,000 women constables to be inducted
Retiring room facility to be extended to all stations
Battery powered Cars for differently-abled and senior citizens at major stations
Feedback services through IVRS on quality of food
Food can be ordered through SMS, phone; Food courts at major stations
Cleanliness budget increased by 40% over last year
CCTVs to be used at stations for monitoring cleanliness
Forming a corpus fund for stations’ maintenance
RO drinking water at some stations and trains
Automatic door closing in mainline and sub-urban coaches
58 new trains and extension of 11; 864 additional EMUs to be started in Mumbai over 2 years
FDI in railway projects, except in operations
FDI, domestic investments in rail infrastructure
Office-on-Wheels: Internet & workstation amenities on select trains
WiFi in A1, A category stations and in select trains
Railways university for technical and non-technical subjects
Some stations to be built to international standards through PPP model
Parcel traffic to be segregated to separate terminals to make passenger traffic unhampered
Loss per passenger per kilometre up from 10% in 2000-01 to 23% in 2012-13
Use of Solar energy at major stations
Highest ever plan outlay of Rs. 65,455 crore for 2014-15
Expenditure in 2014-15 pegged at Rs. 149,176 crore.