Private Trains to Start from 2024

Indian Railways has decided to extend the timeline for running the first-ever passenger train in the country by the private operators till 2024. The Railway Board Chairman, Vinod Kumar, has recently stated this.

According to the Chairman of the Railway Board, by March 2024, there will be a lot of capacity expansion and enhancement to start the services of these trains by the private operators.

Background                                                                                                                                      

On July 02, 2020, the Railway Board Chairman had stated that 151 modern trains would run through Public-Private Partnership model by April 2023 and the process to short-list the bidders started also in July. In the next four years, the Indian Railways is of the opinion that the rail infrastructure has to be improved and the dedicated freight corridor will also have to be completed. The existing network also needs to be upgraded so that the speed of the trains can be increased along the network. All high-density network of 11000 km in the country will be upgraded from the present speed of 110 km to the new speed of 130 km by March 2023. The aim is to reduce the travel time and also to increase the average travel speed in order to improve the capacity of the national transporter.

Further, by March 2024, Indian Railways plans to upgrade the overall network of 34462 km which is responsible for almost 96% of the entire traffic of the national transporter. This will be doubled and also electrified. The national transporter also has plans to increase the speed for all the tracks to 160 km per hour by 2025 and that is why; it is spending 13 trillion dollars in infrastructure development.

Month: Current Affairs - July, 2020