Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav said that before 2014, only Rs 35,000 crore was invested on the capital expenditure (capex) of the railways, today this amount has increased to Rs 2.62 lakh crore. This is the highest capital expenditure for the railways till date. I am very grateful to the Prime Minister and the Finance Minister for such investment in the railways. In the 60 years before 2014, new trains were announced without seeing whether the railway track has capacity or not. These were decisions taken only to increase popularity, which had nothing to do with the state of the railway infrastructure. In the last 10 years, the Prime Minister has laid great emphasis on strengthening the foundation of the railways.
Work is going on at a fast pace for the development of railways
Vaishnav told NDTV that 40,000 km of railway track lines have been electrified. Also, 31,000 km of new railway lines have been built. The Railway Minister further said that if you look at the electrification before 2014, only 20,000 km of track was electrified in 60 years, but in the last 10 years, 40,000 km of track has been electrified. If you look at the speed of track construction, in 2014 this speed was only 4 km per day, which has increased to 14.5 km per day in the last financial year.
During this period, 5300 km of new railway lines have also been built. A lot of attention is also being paid to security. Last year, Rs 98,000 crore was invested in security related activities and this year this amount has been increased to Rs 1,08,000 crore. This will enable the work of replacing old tracks and installing new signal systems. He also informed that now “Kavach 4.0” has been approved, which means that now it can be implemented on a large scale in railways.
Is the government focusing only on premium trains?
Asked if the focus of the railways is on flagship trains like Vande Bharat and not trains for the poor, the minister clarified that the approach is that we have a large low-income segment and we are addressing that base and then there is an aspirational segment which is coming up. That aspirational segment also needs to be addressed. So we are working for the benefit of both. Vande Bharat has several features like armour protection, fast acceleration and semi-high speed operation up to 160 kmph, fully sealed gangways for free movement of passengers, automatic plug doors, ergonomic reclining seats and comfortable seating with rotating seats in the executive class, improved ride comfort.
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As per the railway system, every train has a certain number of coaches. These include some AC and some general (non-AC) coaches. Usually the ratio of AC and general coaches in trains is 1:3, i.e. one third AC and two third general coaches. This ratio has remained till now, but now it has been observed that the demand for non-AC travel is increasing. More and more people are traveling and especially the demand for traveling in general coaches is increasing. Therefore, the railways have started a special campaign. We are manufacturing 2,500 new general coaches and will make 10,000 additional general coaches in the next three years in addition to the regular production program. The main objective of the railways is to enable low-income and middle-income families to travel safely and at an affordable price.