Forget about fare hike, Railway #Budget2018 focus on strengthening railway safety and infrastructure

New Delhi, February 1: Scrapping the age old custom of presenting a separate Railway budget like last year, Finance Minister Arun Jaitley presented the Union Budget 2018 as a combined budget creating a speculation of what is in store for the railways. Arun Jaitley did not spell every detail of the allocation for the railways but only read out the operational parts on focusing on various heads, revenue earning and projected growth in goods and passenger sector.

Keeping railways at top priority, Jaitley announced a capital expenditure of Rs.1.48 trillion for the Indian Railways in this Budget 2018. He also proposed a target of doubling 18,000 km of lines and said gauge conversion is underway to eliminate capacity constraints.

The Budget's focus is expected to be on safety, especially in light of the spike in the number of derailments in 2017, as well as improving passenger amenities. Providing WiFi and CCTV’S progressively on all the railway stations, the budget lays major focus on safety, maintenance of railway tracks, and increase in use of technology and fog safety devices. It was also announced that all railway stations to have allocation of 25,000 footfalls to have escalators.

In a major drive to modernization, the budget is likely to assign Rs 95,000 crore for overall upgradation in the rail infrastructure including signaling automation, replacement of all old tracks and other assets. A provision of around Rs 3,000 crore to install CCTV systems in all 11,000 trains, including premier and suburban services, and all the 8,500 stations in the Indian rail network is expected. The construction of new lines, gauge conversion and doublings besides massive electrification will continue to be part of the infrastructure development plan.

Besides, there are provisions for manufacturing of electric locomotives at Diesel Locomotive Works at Varanasi and Diesel Component Works at Patiala to cater to the growing demand of electric locos in the coming years. Redevelopment of 600 major railway stations has been taken up. Railways being the lifeline of Mumbai transport, the Mumbai Transport system are viewed to being expanded; along with this the suburban network of 160 km has been planned for Bengaluru.

Laying the foundation stone of bullet trains in September2017, an institute is being planned to set up in Vadodara to train manpower required for high-speed railway projects. There is a significant achievement of physical target by railways wherein it has been obtaining 12,000 wagons, 5160 coaches and 700 locomotives Along with this state-run transporter will still include many initiatives to upgrade amenities at rail premises, including SMS alerts for all trains and revamping of the ticketing website.

Viewing the budget 2018 it is seen that Indian Railway is majorly focusing on improvement and making development in track infrastructure is been taken into major consideration.