Indian Railways Sets Goal Of Capturing 50 Per Cent Of Freight Traffic By 2030

India Railways, in a strategic vision document, has set a target to increase its current share of freight traffic from 33 per cent to at least 50 per cent by 2030, reports Business Standard.

India Railways is undergoing major infrastructural and developmental changes. The onus is on the western and eastern corridors and the ministry has spent around Rs 45,000 crore in 2018 while cost estimates for 2019 is revised at Rs 81,459 crore. Once after the completion of these dedicated freight corridors, the traffic is expected to increase by at least 144 million tonne (mt) by 2022.

The railway authorities are currently working in developing at least 505 projects, including 263 doubling, 185 new lines and 57 gauge conversions. All of these projects are in progress and have been on the hold for 30 years now. As per a NITI Aayog report, railways shares have fallen from 85 per cent in 1950 to 33 per cent in 2015.

“We are also looking to improve passenger comfort and hence the panel is of the belief that additional focus has to be given on the station redevelopment and modernisation programmes, where we can have more private participation,” railway official said as quoted by BS.

The document prepared with consultations from experts from various streams was put up for a review with a panel before making it public. The vision document also expects the transporter to have a freight load of 1.9 billion tonnes by 2022-23. Currently, the railways has handled 1,183 million tonne up by 2.76 per cent from previous year.