Highlights of the Railway Ministers’ Speech

Path Breaking performance

The Union Minister for Railways, Shri Lalu Prasad, while presenting the Railway Budget for 2006-07 in the Lok Sabha, said that his approach in bringing about improvements in railways was based on raising quality of service, reducing unit cost and sharing resultant gains with the consumers. He moved away from the beaten path by announcing reduction in AC First and Second Class fares as well as refraining to increase passenger and freight rates.

The Indian Railways have performed exceedingly well in the first nine months of the current financial year and the railways’ performance has been record breaking. The growth in freight loading and freight revenues has gone up by 10 per cent and 18 per cent respectively.

There has been a remarkable improvement in operating efficiency of the Freight Operating Information System. The Railway Minister informed the Lok Sabha that he has succeeded in increasing profits in the freight segment by adopting the ‘Increase Volumes – Reduce Unit Cost’ strategy. He said he has decided to adopt the same strategy for the passenger segment. This is proposed to encourage Public Partnership and Public-Private Partnership in coordination with State Governments, local bodies, ports and private sector to invest in rail projects for expanding and developing the railway network throughout the country.

55 pairs of new trains have been introduced. A pilot project on upgradation of passengers to the next higher class without additional charges introduced on 26th January 2006 has now been extended to all Rajdhani, mail and express trains. The Minister had announced an ambitious programme to cut down losses in the coaching services by about Rs.1000 crore by 2007 and by 50 per cent in the next three years by increasing the number of coaches and occupancy of trains, reducing travel time and reducing losses in the catering and parcel segment. The Minister informed the House about the preparation of an All India Time Table with a zero base in the current year which will lead to reduced journey time on Shatabdis and Rajdhanis.

The facility of i-ticket and e-ticket has now been made available on all mail and express trains. The charges leviable on issue of e-tickets have been reduced by Rs.20 per ticket in higher classes and by Rs.15 per ticket in sleeper classes. Passengers can now buy i-ticket and e-ticket through rail travel service agents also. Railways are providing special squads in compartments reserved for women in the suburban rail areas.

The Research & Development wing of the Indian railways is designing new high capacity wagons which can carry a load of upto 70 tonnes for commodities like coal.1280 route kms of railway electrification have been completed against the Tenth Five Year Plan target of 1800 route kms.

Railways to modernize and upgrade technologically

The Railways will give utmost priority to technological upgradation so that the reliability of services can be improved and operating and maintenance costs can be cut.

In his Speech on the Railway Budget, the Railway minister stressed the need for modernization of wagons, use of modern signaling equipment and need to harness Information Technology to gain customers confidence and cut operating costs.

Wagons are the revenue earning assets of Railways. However, the Railways since the 90s have modernized the locomotives and coaches, while ignoring the wagons which still use old technology. Keeping this in mind the Railway Minister informed the Lok Sabha that new high capacity wagons are being designed by the RDSO. He announced that the prototypes of these wagons will be developed by 2007. All possible efforts will be made to start manufacturing aluminum and stainless wagons also in 2006-07 to improve the payload to weight ratio, the Minister said.

Elaborating further, the Minister announced that a new policy framework will be put in place for transfer of technology to develop wagons capable of carrying loads up to 80 tonnes as also to manufacture special wagons for transportation of goods such as motor vehicles, petro chemicals etc.

For enhancing safety, streamlining train operations and increasing line capacity, the Minister said that modern signaling and telecommunication technology will be used. A multi disciplinary team will be constituted for an in depth study of various advanced signaling and telecommunication alternatives. This team will submit its report within three months. After reviewing the report, a policy will be framed for deciding extensive use of these technologies.

The Minister has announced that the Railways will build on the steps initiated already for using IT in improving operating efficiency of freight transportation. The Terminal Management System (TMS) will be implemented at all major locations. The Railways has already brought about significant improvement in cutting delays and improving operation efficiency through implementation of Freight Operating Information System (FOIS) as part of the project Rake Management System.

Information Technology and computerization will be used for control charting, crew management and Coaching Operations Information System (COIS). Next year, all efforts will be made to implement Control Charting System (CCS) on all the divisions. The complete computerization of Control Office, COIS and interfacing of both these systems with National Train Enquiry System will directly benefit passengers and other rail users.

Public-private partnerships

The Railway Minister invited State Governments, local bodies, ports and private sector to invest in rail projects. While announcing the Railway Budget in Parliament, the Minister promised a level playing field under a transparent policy to investors by further simplifying the policy of public-private partnership. Shri Lalu Prasad also said he will make available many models for public partnerships. Under the new policy, eligible rail projects will be awarded through open bidding to make the entire process competitive and transparent. The present investment of few a thousand crore rupees will be expanded by increasing the extent of this partnership many times over.

Highlighting further the extent of partnerships that the Railways are seeking, the Minister called upon State Governments and local bodies to share in the construction work of Rail Over Bridges (ROB) projects. At present, Railways are constructing 500 ROBs on cost sharing basis with many State Governments. The Minister assured the House that the Railways would not lag behind in providing its share of Rs. 7500 crores required for construction of over 1,000 ROBs.

The Railway Minister added that the policy of allowing private parties to run container trains has been well received. He said all the eligible applicants would be permitted to run container trains before 31st March of this year.