Railway budget promises a better deal for the customer

The railway budget for fiscal 2015-16 presented in Parliament today is a reflection of the realisation that the Indian Railways and its customers deserve a better deal and that through better management of resources, Indian Railways could become the prime mover of Indian Economy once again.

The budget seeks mobilisation of resources for higher investment, decongestion of heavy haul routes and speeding of trains and project delivery, better passenger amenities and safety, so as to make the railways a preferred mode of travel for the masses.

reflecting this, railway minister Suresh Prabhakar Prabhu said that all critical initiatives that he has proposed will be pursued in mission mode.

The railway budget envisages a sustainable and measurable improvement in customer experience, assuring a safer means of travel, substantial expansion of capacity, modernisation of infrastructure and finally making railways financially self-sustainable.

To achieve the budget proposes to adopt a medium-term perspective plan consisting of a White Paper, a Vision-2030 document and a five-year action plan.

But, with resources constraints, Indian Railways is looking at outside funds and partnerships with key stakeholders for long-term financing, technology, rolling stock expansion, infrastructure and last-mile connectivity, which are the key drivers of growth.

The railways will also leverage additional resources, envisaging investment of Rs8,50,000 crore in next five years.

The key to efficiency, however, is achieving a better operating ratio. This has to be achieved through revamping management practices, systems, processes, and re-tooling of human resources.

The Railways is targeting an operating ratio for 2015-16 at 88.5 per cent.

Fast decision making, tight accountability, improved management information systems and better training and development of human resource will also be part of the action plan to achieve the goals.

Mitigating passenger woes
The railway budget has provided a thrust on cleanliness and proposes a new department for keeping stations and trains clean under 'Swachh Rail Swachh Bharat Abhiyan'. It proposed to build new toilets at 650 additional stations besides facilitating booking of disposable bed rolls online.

The railways will open a 24X7 helpline number 138 as also a toll-free number 182 for security-related complaints.

In order to ease ticketing woes, the budget proposes ''operation five minutes'' for issuing unreserved tickets, hot buttons, coin vending machines, concessional e-tickets for differently abled travelers, and development of multilingual portal for booking tickets.

The budget offers to facilitate crediting of refunds through banks and booking of unreserved tickets on smart phones. It also proposes proliferation of automatic ticket vending machines with smart cards and currency options, integrated ticketing system on the lines of rail-cum-road tickets and foe defence personnel a 'defence travel system' for elimination of military 'Warrants'.

The budget has proposed e-catering to select meals from an array of choices. Ordering food through the IRCTC web site at the time of booking of tickets; integrating best food chains into this project; setting up of base kitchens in specified divisions to be run by reputed agencies for serving quality food and expansion of water vending machines.

The railways will provide hand-held terminals to travelling ticket txaminers (TTEs) for verification of passengers, and the possibility of extending facility of SMS on mobiles as a valid proof of travel for PRS tickets will be explored.

A centrally managed 'railway display network' in over 2000 stations in next two years will be included besides  ''SMS Alert'' service to inform passengers in advance of the updated arrival/departure time of trains at starting or destination stations.

For the safety of women passengers surveillance cameras will be installed on a pilot basis in selected mainline coaches and ladies' compartments of suburban coaches.

The railways will also take up a project for introducing on-board entertainment on select Shatabdi trains; mobile phone charging facilities will be provided in general class coaches and will be increased in sleeper class coaches.

The railways plan to upgrade 200 more stations under the Adarsh Station scheme. The budget proposes to provide Wi-Fi at B category stations. Railway stations will also provide the facility of self-operated lockers for passengers to keep their belongings.

In the absence of new trains, The railways propose to augment passenger capacity in identified trains besides addition of more general class coaches in select trains.

The railways has also approached NID to design user friendly ladders for climbing upper berths. It has also proposed more quota of lower berths for senior citizens.

TTEs will now be instructed to help senior citizens, pregnant women and differently-abled persons in obtaining lower berths; middle bay of coaches to be reserved for women and senior citizens.  The budget has made a provision of Rs120 crore for lifts and escalator at railway stations.

All newly manufactured coaches will now be Braille enabled, will have wider entrances for the ease of differently-abled passengers.

Decongesting train services
Indian Railways has proposed revamping its station development policy completely and simplify process for faster development by inviting open bids. It has proposed to develop 10 satellite railway terminals in major cities with twin purpose of decongesting the city and providing services to suburban passengers.

Seventy seven projects covering 9,400 km of doubling/tripling/quadrupling works along with electrification, covering almost all states, at a cost of Rs96,182 crore will be taken up.

Traffic facility works with outlay of Rs2,374 crore have been proposed as a top priority. In order to accelerate the pace of railway electrification, 6,608 route kilometres will be sanctioned for 2015-16, an increase of 1,330 per cent over the previous year.

As per the budget proposal, the speed of 9 railway corridors will be increased from existing 110 and 130 kmph to 160 and 200 kmph, respectively, so that inter-metro journeys like Delhi-Kolkata and Delhi-Mumbai can be completed overnight. Average speed of freight trains in empty and loaded conditions, will be enhanced to 100 kmph for empty freight trains and 75 kmph for loaded trains.

Safety
Declaring safety of paramount importance for Railways, an action plan has been proposed for accident prone areas. The budget also proposes 970 ROB/RUBs and other safety-related works to eliminate 3,438 level crossings at a total expense of Rs6,581 crore, 2,600 per cent increase from the previous year. Train protection warning system and train collision avoidance system will be installed on select routes at the earliest.

Innovation
The budget proposes to constitute an innovation council called `Kayakalp' for business re-engineering and introduce a spirit of innovation in Railways besides setting up of technology portal to invite innovative technological solutions. Four Railway Research Centers in select universities for fundamental research have also been proposed besides 'Malaviya Chair' for Railway Technology at IIT (BHU), Varanasi.

Public-private partnerships
PPP cell of Railways will be revamped to make it result oriented, ''Foreign Rail Technology Cooperation scheme'' will be launched. joint ventures will be set up with states for focused project development, resource mobilisation, land acquisition, project implementation and monitoring of critical rail projects. In order to meet the requirements of new lines JVs will also be set up with major public sector customers.

Coastal connectivity
Rail budget has also proposed coastal connectivity programme in partnership with ports for Nargol, Chharra, Dighi, Rewas and Tuna. Besides this, projects worth Rs2,500 crore will be taken up through BOT/ annuity route. These include Wardha-Nagpur 3rd line, Kazipet-Vijaywada 3rd line, Bhadrak-Nargundi 3rd line and Bhuj-Nalia gauge conversion.

Environment
To make Indian Railways more environment friendly, 100 diesel electric multiple units (DEMUs) will be enabled for dual fuel - CNG and diesel. Locomotives running on LNG are also currently under development. Noise levels of locos will be brought on par with international norms and concerns related to wildlife to be addressed.

As a part of its social initiatives, railway stations and training centres will be made available for skill development. `Incredible Rail for Incredible India' will be launched and training of auto-rickshaw and taxi-operators as tourist-guides on the model of Konkan Railway will be taken up for tourism promotion.

IRCTC will work on promoting the Gandhi circuit to attract tourists to mark the occasion of 100 years of the return of Mahatma Gandhi to India from South Africa. `Kisan Yatra', a special travel scheme for farmers for farming and marketing technique centres has also been proposed.

The railway budget estimates plan outlay for 2015-16 to be Rs1,00,011 crore, an increase of 52 per cent over the revised estimate for 2014-15 plan size. Out of this 41.6 per cent resources will come from central government support while 17.8 per cent will be generated from internal resources. 

As parliamentary minister Venkaiah Naidu put it, the railway budget will address the major issues of 'speed, safety, security and satisfaction of rail users'.