Indian Railways have prepared a National Rail Plan (NRP) for India – 2030. The Plan is to create a ‘future ready’ Railway system by 2030. The NRP is aimed to formulate strategies based on both operational capacities and commercial policy initiatives to increase modal share of the Railways in freight. The objective of the Plan is to create capacity ahead of demand, which in turn would also cater to future growth in demand right up to 2050 and also increase the modal share of Railways to 45% in freight traffic and to continue to sustain it. To achieve this objective all possible financial models including Public Private Partnership (PPP) are being considered.

The main features of the National Rail Plan are:-

The draft plan has been put up in the public domain (The Indian Railways website) and is also being circulated amongst stakeholders for comments/remarks.

Once the comments/remarks from stakeholders have been obtained, the NRP in its final form will be issued incorporating the pipeline of projects that will be executed up to 2030. The Detailed Project Report (DPR) for each project will be prepared and processed for sanctioning. Once sanction is obtained, fund requirement on a year to year basis will be worked out and the funds earmarked in the annual capital expenditure.

The NRP is for the entire Indian Railways network and not only for districts connected to the existing rail network but also districts indirectly impacted by rail transportation. In effect virtually all the districts of the country get linked to the plan.

Implementation of the NRP has already commenced. The Indian Railways has identified and prioritised a large number of projects designated as Super Critical, Critical and Coal/Port connectivity, for completion as per the Vision 2024 document which is a subset of the National Rail Plan.

This information was given by the Minister of Railways, Commerce & Industry and Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, Shri Piyush Goyal in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.

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DJN/MKV

Indian Railways have prepared a National Rail Plan (NRP) for India – 2030. The Plan is to create a ‘future ready’ Railway system by 2030. The NRP is aimed to formulate strategies based on both operational capacities and commercial policy initiatives to increase modal share of the Railways in freight. The objective of the Plan is to create capacity ahead of demand, which in turn would also cater to future growth in demand right up to 2050 and also increase the modal share of Railways to 45% in freight traffic and to continue to sustain it. To achieve this objective all possible financial models including Public Private Partnership (PPP) are being considered.

The main features of the National Rail Plan are:-

The draft plan has been put up in the public domain (The Indian Railways website) and is also being circulated amongst stakeholders for comments/remarks.

Once the comments/remarks from stakeholders have been obtained, the NRP in its final form will be issued incorporating the pipeline of projects that will be executed up to 2030. The Detailed Project Report (DPR) for each project will be prepared and processed for sanctioning. Once sanction is obtained, fund requirement on a year to year basis will be worked out and the funds earmarked in the annual capital expenditure.

The NRP is for the entire Indian Railways network and not only for districts connected to the existing rail network but also districts indirectly impacted by rail transportation. In effect virtually all the districts of the country get linked to the plan.

Implementation of the NRP has already commenced. The Indian Railways has identified and prioritised a large number of projects designated as Super Critical, Critical and Coal/Port connectivity, for completion as per the Vision 2024 document which is a subset of the National Rail Plan.

This information was given by the Minister of Railways, Commerce & Industry and Consumer Affairs, Food & Public Distribution, Shri Piyush Goyal in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.

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DJN/MKV