Indian Railways registered a 4% increase in earnings and 2% higher capital expenditure in the first nine-months of the current fiscal compared with a year ago.
According to official estimates, for the April to December period, total capital expenditure stood at Rs 1.92 lakh crore while freight raked in Rs 1.26 lakh crore in earnings.
Earnings from passenger business were 6% higher at Rs 55,988 crore.
“Total revenue of Indian Railways stood at Rs 1.93 lakh crore in the first nine months of the current fiscal. This is Rs 7,674 crore higher than the topline last year,” a senior official said.
The bulk of these earnings are from increased freight loading, which was 2% higher at 1,179 million tonnes during the period.
There was a 3% increase in the total number of mail, express, passenger and other train services, with more than 2.07 million runs. “This is an all-time-high record. Last year, we ran 2.02 million train services during the same period,” the official said.
The number of special trains run during periods of high demand was 54% more compared with the first nine months of the previous year at 57,169. To ensure that this momentum is continued, the national transporter has decided to introduce a new timetable which, in a first, has 62 special trains pre-included on popular routes.
Besides, 74 new services, including 34 pairs of Vande Bharat trains, have been included in the new timetable.
Track Improvement
Officials also said that more than one-fifth of India’s railway tracks can now handle train speeds of up to 130 km/h following improvements in safety through fencing and adoption of modern signalling infrastructure.
“Around 23,000 track kilometres (TKM) of the total 1.03 lakh TKM of Indian Railways’ network is now fit to run trains at a speed of 130 km/h,” a senior official said, adding that this has improved connectivity since more trains can run in less time. TKM is the length of running tracks between two points.
The official said 54,337 TKM of the rail network can handle train speeds of up to 110 km/h. “The speed of 2,741 TKM network has already been raised to 110 km/h, against a target of 5,000 TKM, during the current fiscal,” the official said.
