The officials say that 2022-2023 can be seen as an unprecedented year for the railways as it has laid the highest kilometer of tracks ever in its history.
The Indian Railways has constructed an average of 7.41 km of tracks in the past decade, including new line construction and doubling, tripling and conversion of existing lines, in response to an application under the Right to Information (RTI) Act by the Ministry of Railways unveiled.
According to data provided by the ministry, in ten years from 2014-15 to 2023-24, the ministry has constructed a total of 27057.7 km of railway lines, including construction of new lines, doubling or tripling of existing lines and conversion from meter gauge to gauge gauge. broad gauge.
Calculating the data, the daily average number of kilometers of railway construction in 10 years works out to about 7.41 km, said Chandra Shekhar Gaur of Madhya Pradesh, who had submitted the application.
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said at recent press conferences that Indian Railways is currently adding around 15 km of new tracks every day.
“Last year the railways added 5,200 km of new rail lines, which corresponds to the entire network of Switzerland. This year we are adding 5,500 km. From 4 km per day in 2014, we are now adding about 15 km per day of new track . traces,” Vaishnaw said at a press conference at Rail Bhawan on February 2, 2024.
The RTI response shows that the railways laid a total of 3,901 km of track in 2022-23, including new (473 km), doubling (3,185.53 km) and track conversion (242.2 km). The Indian Railways website, which shows such statistics, has not been updated as it still shows data up to 2021-2022.
The officials say that 2022-2023 can be seen as an unprecedented year for the railways as it has laid the highest kilometer of tracks ever in its history.
In July 2021, Ashwini Vaishnaw took charge of the Railway Ministry and it was under his leadership that the Railways achieved a historic feat by laying 3,901 km of track, which works out to about 10.68 km per day. This was unprecedented, said a railway official, close to infrastructure projects.
He added: This important achievement was achieved thanks to the increase in budgetary allocation, the simplification of the work allocation process and the acceleration of the work order process.”
Gaur said that despite significant progress, the railways failed to continue the momentum as the total track construction work fell from 3,901 km in 2022-23 to 2,966 km in 2023-24, which works out to 8.12 km per day.
The second best performance of the railways was in the financial year 2018-19, when a total of 3,596 km of track was laid.
Gaur also highlighted that construction of new railway lines is slow as 4838.47 km of new lines have been constructed in the last decade at an average speed of 1.32 km per day.
The railways’ best performance in new line construction was in 2016-2017, when they laid 953 km of new track, which equates to about 2.61 km per day.
More construction of new lines indicates that more new areas are covered by the rail network, while doubling and tripling is good for minimizing over-utilization of existing track and improving train punctuality, along with ensuring passenger safety , Gaur said.
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First print: May 8, 2024 | 5:21 PM IST