Railways panel to suggest plan for 15 per cent traffic growth

NEW DELHI: Railways has constituted yet another committee ahead of Rail Budget to identify factors and issues affecting growth of freight and passenger traffic and suggest an action plan for traffic optimisation on short term and long term basis.

While the short term action plan will be for 2015-16, the long term is for upto 2018-19 and for both the terms, the target is to achieve 15 per cent growth in traffic.

The eight-member committee headed by Additional Member Mohd Jamshed will have representatives from Concor, DFC and officials from other zonal railways.

The committee will suggest policy changes required to be undertaken by the railways to enable achieving higher traffic output, said a senior Railway Ministry official.

The committee has been asked to submit its report in six weeks time.

After taking over Ministry, Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu has constituted several committees including Mittal Committee, Sreedharan Committee, Vinod Rai Committee seeking suggestions for improving functioning of the national transporter.

The newly constituted committee will review traffic growth in passenger and freight sectors from 2010-11 to 2014-15 and also constraints in achieving higher growth during the period.

The official said the panel will identify bottlenecks to be removed for capacity augmentation. It has been asked to suggest innovative measures for enhancing throughput to achieve traffic growth of upto 15 per cent.