Indian Railways to invest Rs 18,000 crores to upgrade speed & infrastructure

New Delhi (Urban Transport News): The Indian Railways is planning to invest around Rs 18,000 crores to upgrade railway infrastructure so that it can maintain the speed of trains at 160 km/h on the busiest Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Kolkata routes. On October 22, Confederation of Indian Industry (CII) in association with the Indian Railways and Urban Transport News has inaugurated a three-day Asia's largest event of Railway industry "13th International Railway Equipment Exhibition (IREE) 2019" and "International Rail Conference" on 22nd October 2019 at Aerocity, New Delhi, India. While delivering his keynote speech at International Rail Conference in the inaugural session, Vinod Kumar Yadav, Chairman, Railway Board said that Indian Railways' target is to operate high-speed trains in two categories at 160 km/h on the Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Kolkata routes, and up to 320 km/h under the ongoing Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail (bullet train) project.

"We are positioning ourselves to manufacture coaches for the railway and the metro rails and produce all these coaches in India. By December 2021 we shall have a different corridor for Delhi-Kolkata and Delhi-Mumbai railway network at the speed of more than 130km/h and 160km/h by 2025", said Vinod Kumar Yadav, Chairman, Railway Board during his speech at IREE 2019. He further said that in the last five years, Indian Railways have envisioned a planned infrastructure for the development of a 34,000 km network with multi-tracking projects. In the conference, Rajesh Agrawal, Member (Rolling Stock), Railway Board talks about the exponential growth of Rolling Stock and how India shall reach an inflection in terms of transportation, technology, and mobility.

"Initiatives to transform and upscale the passenger seating arrangement and NSP coaches are being measured to raise industry standards", said Rajesh Agrawal, Member (Rolling Stock), Railway Board in his speech at IREE 2019. Agrawal said that new 100 units of Vande Bharat Express (semi high-speed inter-city electric multiple units) will be manufactured in the next five years. To achieve the target , Indian railways will produce more aluminum coaches as Prime Minister Narendra Modi is planning to review the railway projects. AK Agrawal, Additional Member (Mechanical) said that Indian railways is planning to upgrade on massive scale passenger services and amenities, production of rolling stocks and capacity building.

Presently, the average maximum speed of trains on various routes is 99 km/h and the recently introduced Vande Bharat Express on Delhi-Varanasi route touches an average speed of 104 km/h on the Delhi-Kanpur section. In the sidelines of the Internation Rail Conference, RITES Limited and Ghana's Railway Development Minister Joe Ghartey signed a Memorandum of Undertaking (MoU) for implementing the rail projects in Ghana.