Understanding the National Rail Plan

The National Rail Plan is a strategic document that sets forth a long-term vision for enhancing the railway network in India.

1. The National Rail Plan (NRP) is driven by a vision to augment capacity, improve infrastructure, and increase rail freight share to meet future demand.
2. The Plan is focused on developing adequate capacity by 2030 to cater to projected demand until 2050.
3. A key task of the NRP was to map the entire Indian Railway Network using the Geographical Information System (GIS) Platform, including their respective attributes and line features. This extensive exercise was conducted as part of the study, resulting in the entire network being mapped on the GIS platform.

Objectives of the National Rail Plan

Below are the key objectives of the NRP.

1. Generate capacity ahead of demand by 2030, which will cater to growth in demand until 2050.
2. Increase the modal share of Railways from the current 27% to 45% in freight by 2030 as part of a national commitment to reduce carbon emission and sustain it.
3. Forecast traffic growth in both passenger and freight segments year on year until 2030 and on a decadal basis until 2050.
4. Develop strategies based on operational capacities and commercial policy programmes to increase the modal share of the Railways in freight to 45% by 2030.
5. Significantly reduce the transit time of freight by increasing the average speed of freight trains from the current 22 kmph to 50 kmph.
6. Lower the overall cost of rail transportation by nearly 30% and pass on the benefits to the customers.
7. Map the growth in demand on the Indian Railway route map and simulate the capacity behavior of the network in the future.
8. Identify future bottlenecks based on the above simulation.
9. Select projects with suitable technology in track work, signalling and rolling stock to mitigate these bottlenecks well in advance.

National Rail Plan Vision 2024

Vision 2024 is an initiative launched to expedite the execution of key projects by 2024. Here are some major projects under this initiative:

• Achieving 100% electrification by December 2030
• Multi-tracking congested routes
• Upgrading speed on the Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah routes to 160 km/h
• Upgrading speed on all other Golden Quadrilateral-Golden Diagonal (GQ/GD) routes to 130 km/h
• Eliminating all Level Crossings on all Golden Quadrilateral-Golden Diagonal routes

Additional Features of the NRP

• Identification of three Dedicated Freight Corridors, namely East Coast, East-West & North-South, along with their timelines.
• Identification of future projects (beyond 2024) in track and signalling with their respective timelines.
• Identification of new high-speed rail corridors.
• Assessment of the total capital requirement for all the projects.
• Identification of new financing models and streams, including those based on public-private partnerships.

Significance of the National Rail Plan

The Indian Railways, being the fourth-largest rail network in the world, carried 8.26 billion passengers and transported 1.16 billion tonnes of freight in FY 2017-18. To cater to the aspirations of economic growth and development, modernisation and optimisation of the railways is crucial.

Historically, the focus has been more on the passenger services of the railways rather than freight services. This has resulted in railways not contributing as much to growth as it did in other countries. The NRP aims to rectify this by increasing the share of railways in freight. Another significant aspect of the NRP is its use of a GIS platform to map the railway network and identify gaps. This includes the digitization of railway lines and stations, and the identification of Stations and Junctions for the upcoming Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC).