9910 km track length commissioned under vision 2024

Under Vision 2024, as on 01.04.2023, total 251 Railway infrastructure projects (76 New Line, 19 Gauge Conversion and 156 Doubling), covering total length of 29,147 km, costing 4.92 lakh crore in the entire country including those falling fully/partly in Uttar Pradesh, Madhya Pradesh and Maharashtra are in planning/sanction/construction stages, out of which 9,910 km track length has been commissioned and an expenditure of 2.45 lakh crore has been incurred upto March 2023.

Presently, Ministry of Railways has taken up construction of two Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFC) viz. Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC) from Ludhiana to Sonnagar (1337 Km) and Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC) from Jawaharlal Nehru Port Terminal (JNPT) to Dadri (1506 Km). So far, 2196 km (EDFC-1150Km and WDFC-1046 Km) out of total sanctioned length of 2843 km of DFC, has been completed.

Speeding up of trains is a constant endeavour and a continuous process on Indian Railways (IR). IR has also undertaken rationalization of time table in a scientific manner with the assistance of IIT-Bombay, inter-alia to speed up trains services by converting passenger trains to Express services and Express services to Superfast services. Further, Indian Railways has introduced Vande Bharat trains, which have higher speed potential. Till 21st July, 2023, 50 Vande Bharat trains have been introduced on the IR network.

Presently, a High Speed Rail project namely Mumbai – Ahmedabad High Speed Rail (MAHSR) Project is undertaken with technical collaboration and financial assistance from the Government of Japan.

The National Rail Plan mentions the following routes for future possible development for high speed rail network:

(i)    Delhi – Varanasi

(ii)   Delhi – Ahmedabad

(iii)  Mumbai – Nagpur

(iv)  Mumbai – Hyderabad

(v)   Chennai – Mysore

(vi)  Delhi – Amritsar

(vii) Varanasi – Howrah

This information was given by the Minister of Railways, Communications and Electronic & Information Technology, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.

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