Railways fast tracks projects to decongest choked networks

NEW DELHI: Railways has fast-tracked the capacity augmentation projects in certain busiest rail corridors to decongest the choked path for faster movement of trains.

There will be commissioning of total 2,500 km new track in the current fiscal, Railway Board Member (Engineering) V K Gupta said on Monday.

Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu has earmarked 77 projects involving doubling, new line and gauge conversion to be undertaken in 24 over saturated corridors in the Rail Budget 2015-16.

The laying of new track including doubling and trebling is being undertaken in some of the most saturated corridors such as Delhi-Mumbai, Delhi-Howrah, Delhi-Chennai, Howrah-Chennai Ahmedabad-Rajkot.

Gupta said the priority is on decongestion of the choked corridors to facilitate faster movement of trains and for this we have used new ways to speed up the process.

He said 28 projects have got in-principle approval out of the 77 projects and tenders have been invited for the same. The work on these projects is expected to commence in the next two months.

Railways has fixed the target at commissioning of 6.85 km track per day in the current year.

Gupta also said the first tranche of about Rs 2,000 cr LIC fund for investment in capacity augmentation projects would be materialised shortly.

Railways had signed an MoU with LIC in March this year for providing Rs 1.5 lakh crore over the next five years to meet its capital requirement for network decongestion and expansion by 2019.

Railways planned to invest over Rs 43,000 crore for network expansion and other amenities in 2015-16, as against Rs 26,600 crore in the previous year.