The Minister of Railways, Communications and Electronics & Information Technology,  Ashwini Vaishnav in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today that Indian Railways have prepared a National Rail Plan (NRP) for India – 2030.

“The Plan is to create a ‘future ready’ Railway system by 2030.  The NRP is aimed to formulate strategies based on both operational capacities and commercial policy initiatives to increase the modal share of the Railways in freight to 45%,” he said

The Minister informed the house that the objective of the Plan is to create capacity ahead of demand, which in turn would also cater to future growth in demand right up to 2050 and also increase the modal share of Railways to 45% in freight traffic and to continue to sustain it. “The National Rail Plan envisages reducing transit time of freight substantially by increasing average speed of freight trains to 50Kmph,” he added.

As part of the National Rail Plan, Vision 2024 has been launched for accelerated implementation of certain critical projects by 2024 such as 100% electrification, multi-tracking of congested routes, upgradation of speed to 160 km/h on Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai routes, upgradation 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. Besides, NRP also identifies new Dedicated Freight Corridors and also new High-Speed Rail Corridors.

The railways would also assess Locomotive requirements to meet twin objectives of 100% electrification (Green Energy) and increasing freight modal share. The Railway Minister said in the written reply.

“The Railway Ministry would also assess the total capital investment that would be required along with a periodical break up. The Ministry is also contemplating Sustained involvement of the Private Sector in areas like operations and ownership of rolling stock, development of freight and passenger terminals, development/operations of track infrastructure etc,” Railway Minister said.

“Fifty-eight Supercritical Projects of a total length of 3750 km costing ₹39,663 Crore and 68 Critical Projects of a total length of 6913 km costing ₹75,736 Crore, have been identified for completion by 2024,” Ashwini Vaishnav told the house.