To fill the huge gap between the demand and the availability of seats, the Indian Railways has undertaken a massive capacity augmentation drive on major routes.
According to Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu, by 2020, passengers will be able to get reservation on demand for all premier and mail/express trains.
Speaking at the Confederation of Indian Industry Annual Session 2017-18 here on Friday, Prabhu said that this will be possible once the existing network capacity is freed up for passengers by opening up dedicated freight corridors.
The dedicated freight corridors, he said, are expected to become operational by 2019, adding that the ‘capacity will be increased accordingly on the existing routes’.
"Lines are oversaturated now. With the commissioning of DFCs, there will be more scope for running passenger trains at a higher speed," he said.
“So, when the dedicated freight corridors come up, major trunk routes will operate on them, so that other tracks are freed for passengers traffic,” he added.
“Over the decades, the freight traffic has gone up by 1,344 per cent and the passenger traffic by 1,642 per cent. But the route per kilometre has increased only by 23 per cent,” he further informed.
At present, there is a huge gap between the demand and the availability of train berths, particularly on the busy Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai routes. It leaves many passengers with wait-listed tickets, which means if the ticket does not get confirmed, the passenger is not allowed to travel.
The 3,228 km long eastern and western dedicated freight corridors are expected to be operational by December 2019. Besides, the railways has started the work on Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai rail corridors to raise train speed to 200 km per hour.
"We have earmarked Rs 20,000 crore to strengthen infrastructure and upgrade the signalling system on these two routes in the next 3-4 years," Prabhu said.
The railways has added 16,500 km long tracks to its network in the past two years.
“We are happy to say that 16,500 km of doubling of railway line has been sanctioned in the last two-and-a-half years as opposed to about 20,000 km in the last 70-75 years. So when these projects are completed, there will be capacity augmentation, and we can handle more passengers,” he said.
