Indian Railways working to four-track 11,000 km of 7 high-density routes: Vaishnaw

New Delhi: The country's seven high-density rail routes, spanning around 11,000 km and are being expanded to four tracks to increase passenger and freight carrying capacity across the country, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Wednesday.

"Spread across nearly 11,000 km, these routes account for around 41 per cent of total railway traffic while covering just 16 per cent of the railway network," he said on X while outlining the scale and significance of these routes, which carry a major share of India's total rail traffic.

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The seven high-density routes, which connect some of India's biggest cities and regions, are Delhi-Howrah, Howrah-Chennai, Chennai-Mumbai, Mumbai-Delhi, Delhi-Chennai, Mumbai-Howrah and Delhi-Guwahati.

"Indian Railways is moving towards four-laning the entire high-density network to increase capacity and support the growing movement of passengers and freight across the country," Vaishnaw said, underlining the environmental and economic advantages of rail transport.

He stated that the four-laning of these key routes is part of a larger effort to build a railway network with greater capacity, lower transport costs and cleaner mobility.