To bolster the rail network throughout the country, Union Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Thursday informed that  Indian Railways will forge 40,000 km of rail tracks to expand the country’s premier transport organization’s outreach. 

Interacting with media persons in New Delhi on budget announcements, Ashwini Vaishanw said 40,000 km of rail tracks will be laid as part of these corridors which will enhance the network capacity to a point that the problem of the ticket wait list will be over by around 2030-31.

Talking about the conversion of 40,000 coaches to the Vande Bharat standard, Vaishnaw said the success of Vande Bharat and Amrit Bharat trains has shown the way for the Railways to upgrade all other coaches.

“We have about 40,000 conventional coaches. They can all be upgraded with the experience that we have behind us,” he said.

Collectively these corridors (about 40,000 km of new tracks) will be laid in the next six to eight years. With this, there will be a significant increase in the capacity of the Railways. As you know that the Railways are the least polluting mode of transportation and this will further reduce 90 percent of carbon emissions,” Vaishnaw added.

The Union Minister said the Interim Budget announcements have laid a big focus on creating additional capacity through these three corridors.

He said these will be multi-model corridors rather than the dedicated freight corridors that only handle freight trains. He also said there are 434 projects in these corridors and they will be implemented at approximately Rs 11 lakh crore.

Focus on capacity enhancement 

The Union Minister emphasised the fact that the focus of the current government is on capacity enhancement in a big way.

Speaking on the plan of 3 new railway corridors he said first is the energy, metal, and cement corridor which will help reduce the pollution on roads and make sure that the cost of logistics comes down. 

The second is the port connectivity which will provide seamless connectivity to the ports through railways in a multi-mode Gati Shakti way, Vaishanw added. 

Calling the third corridor “Amrit Chaturbhuj”, the Railway Minister said, “If you look at the shape of our rail network, it is in the form of a quadrilateral and diagonals. This is akin to the golden quadrilateral of highways which is also similar to our railway network. So, Amrit Chaturbhuj will be started on high-density traffic routes.”  

Railways rises with network expansion

“Last year, the Railways added 5,200 km of new tracks which is equivalent to the entire network of Switzerland. This year we are adding 5,500 kms. From 4 km per day in 2014, we are now adding about 15 km per day of the new tracks,” he said.

This is a significant improvement in the way of working and managing networks, he added.

Highlighting that in the current year, the Railways has already achieved 82 percent of its capex budget by the end of January, he said the total budget allocation for 2024-25 is 2.52 lakh-crore which is significant and will help in increasing capacity, improving infrastructure and passenger experience.