'Indian Railways Working on Rationalising Passenger Fares and Removing Bottlenecks'

The Indian Railways is rationalizing passenger fares and freight rates, the chairman of the board Vinod Kumar Yadav said. He said: “We are going to rationalize the fares and freight rates. Something is being thought about. I cannot divulge more.

This is a sensitive subject. While the freight fares are already high, our target is to draw more traffic from road to railways. ”Yadav didn’t mention if prices would be increased. Yadav added that the idea was to provide cohesiveness and consequently better services.

He said that officers of Indian Railways only will be considered for CEO post and no outsider will be posted as CEO. Secondly, career growth of Indian Railways officers is assured. No officer of Indian Railways shall be at a disadvantage in this new restructured service.

He also added that offering apex level to the General Managers is a step to empower them for a better coordination with State authorities to take decisions swiftly and independently.

This will enable Railway Board to concentrate on policy framing, strategic planning and coordination of Zonal Railways. He added said that the priority of Indian Railways is to improve infrastructure and remove the bottlenecks.

Indian Railway is aiming to run trains at 160 kmph on Kolkata-Delhi and Delhi-Mumbai corridor. We are hopeful that 3000 route kilometres of dedicated freight corridor will be completed by 2021.

In next 10 years, Indian Railways will have independent dedicated freight corridor on all freight routes. Indian Railways aims to run trains on-demand and redevelop stations under PPP mode.

In last five years, Railways investment has increased 3 to 4 times and projects have been prioritized into supercritical and critical to speed up upgradation of infrastructure.

Railways has set a high growth target and to achieve this nimble and cohesive decision-making is the foremost requirement. The Indian Railways runs one of the largest transportation networks in the world. It’s incurring losses in the passenger segment.