On the fast-track to meet demands of passengers

Safety, cleanliness and punctuality continue to be the Railways’ top priorities, despite running trains for over a hundred years now.

Trains may take a lot more time compared with budget airlines, but they continue to be the preferred mode of transport for many in the middle-class category, several in the lower middle-class segment, and all of migratory labourers.

The unmet demand is visible during peak times such as summer vacations, festive rush and other seasonal holidays, with the Railways issuing ‘wait-listed tickets’ to passengers with the wait-listed numbers running into hundreds. These are times when the Railways does its best to accommodate the extra rush by running special trains, though that’s usually not enough.

The need for a good rail transport system becomes all the more urgent with airlines closing down or increasing prices to abnormal levels at the slightest hint of surge in demand or even during emergencies such as a flood.

The slowdown in economic growth notwithstanding, as of May this year, the Railways booked almost 8 per cent more passengers for its reserved segment travel, according to official data from the Railways.

Wooing passengers

The Railways is doing its best to meet the demands of all segments of passengers by rolling out more trains from production units, increasing track capacity to accommodate more trains, rolling out trains of LHB (Germany-based Linke-Hofmann-Busch, which was later acquired by Alstom) that are safer and more comfortable. Simultaneously, the behemoth is also producing experience trains — such as the bullet train look-alike, code-named Train 18 — to woo high-end travellers, and trains with see-through roofs to tourist attractions.

To enhance and expand the train services, the Railways requires funds, some of which is expected to accrue from the higher budgetary allocation. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has marginally increased the outlay for the Railways for 2019-20 against what was proposed four months ago in the Interim Budget presented by Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, and who alsoheld the additional charge of the Finance portfolio then.

Increased outlay

For 2019-20, Sitharaman has proposed a higher total capital outlay of ₹1,60,175.64 crore against Goyal’s ₹1,58,658 crore. This includes a marginally higher budgetary support of ₹65,837 crore (against the ₹64,587 crore announced in the Interim Budget), with the same level of borrowings of ₹55,471 crore. The Railways hopes to get the remaining funds from investors, including State governments, public and private sectors, and from internal accruals.

Meanwhile, the behemoth has fast-paced its journey of attracting private investment for station modernisation, running trains, creating infrastructure and rolling out coaches, among others. Its recent move of corporatising production units has been met with protests from workers, who fear this is a step towards privatisation.

From a carbon footprint perspective, the Railways is the cleanest mode of travel in terms of fuel used per person or per tonne of cargo — something that the government may take note of while allocating funds to this mode of transport, for short as well as long distance travel across country.

Electrification track

The national transporter, for which fuel makes up the second largest cost after salaries, is on the path of electrification. As more and more routes get electrified, it hopes to run more trains on thermal or other renewable power, controlling the diesel cost. Diesel accounts for a chunk of the total fuel cost of the Railways, and at a time when global conditions — the US-Iran tension and production cuts in crude — point to a spike in diesel prices, the Railways may just about find respite in electrification.

Freight movement provides for almost two-thirds of the total earnings. Freight customers have been demanding lower freight rates, more capacity and time-tabled trains.

These will be met through measures such as fixing RFIDs (adio-frequency identification tags) in wagons, completing the freight corridor, getting more high-capacity wagons, lowering the extent of subsidy for passengers, and ensuring a level-playing field between investors and the Railways as investment in infrastructure goes up. Besides, the proposal to set up a regulatory body has been pending for long.

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