New Delhi: Indian Railways plans to bring down by five hours the travel time between the busy Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai routes with an investment of about Rs 14,000 crore in infrastructure over the next four years. The two routes account for 30 per cent of passenger and 20% of freight traffic.
This is one of the 11 proposals prepared by the Railways in its 100-day plan, with instructions to initiate immediate action to implement them by August 31.
Presently, the fastest train on the Delhi-Howrah route takes 17 hours to complete the journey while on the Delhi-Mumbai route the quickest train takes 15.5 hours. The proposal is to reduce the travel time to 12 hours and 10 hours respectively.
The proposal to reduce the travel time is being sent to the Cabinet Committee for Economic Affairs for approval.
According to the proposal document, the Railways has set a target to ramp up the speed of the trains on these routes from the present 130 kmph to 160 kmph.
The document, a part of the 100 day-plan being prepared by Union Ministries on the direction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, lays down the vision for the national transporter for the next three months.
It states that within the next 100 days approval should be obtained for projects to raise to 160 kmph the speed of the New Delhi-Howrah route (1,525 KM) at a cost of Rs 6,684 crore and the New Delhi-Mumbai route (1,483 km) at Rs 6,806 crore. The project is proposed to be implemented within four years from the date of approval.
Among the other targets is the Railways’ version of the ‘give it up’ scheme which was introduced by Railway Minister Piyush Goyal for encouraging people to give up their subsidies on train tickets. The 100-day plan also includes Railways’ earlier proposal of handing over certain routes to private players.
PTI