Panel gives green signal to 150 pvt trains on 100 routes
Dipak Dash & Sidhartha TNN
New Delhi:08.01.2020
A high-powered panel has cleared the road for rolling out nearly 150 private trains on 100 routes, including Mumbai-Delhi and Howrah-Delhi sectors, which will compete with Rajdhani.
While two Tejas trains have been handed over for running by Railways-controlled IRCTC on the Delhi-Lucknow and Mumbai-Ahmedabad routes as an experiment with the “private sector”, the committee’s report is expected to pave the way for a massive competition to the services currently being offered by the state transporter.
The panel was set up by railway minister Piyush Goyal after Railway Board chairman VK Yadav flagged private trains in the government’s 100 days’ agenda.
The recommendations put out for stakeholder consultations have proposed that Indian as well as global players, with experience in railway or travel and tourism sectors be permitted, provided they have a minimum net worth of ₹450 crore. Other performance parameters, such as a maximumpermissible 15-minute delay, beyond which passengers will have to be compensated, have been proposed. On the IRCTCoperated Tejas trains, a similar facility has been offered.
The routes have been divided into seven clusters with a clear plan to develop infrastructure in less-utilised stations such as Panvel near Mumbai and Tilak Bridge and Okhla in Delhi for running long-distance trains.
The train routes have been primarily identified on Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Kolkata routes as the railways is hopeful of freeing up tracks by December 2021, when both Eastern and Western Dedicated Freight Corridors will become fully operational and take over the burden of handling goods traffic. The railways has also approved the plan to improve the existing tracks on these two routes to allow trains to run at 160 kmph, which has been proposed as the speed limit for private trains.
Full report on www.toi.in
Dipak Dash & Sidhartha TNN
New Delhi:08.01.2020
A high-powered panel has cleared the road for rolling out nearly 150 private trains on 100 routes, including Mumbai-Delhi and Howrah-Delhi sectors, which will compete with Rajdhani.
While two Tejas trains have been handed over for running by Railways-controlled IRCTC on the Delhi-Lucknow and Mumbai-Ahmedabad routes as an experiment with the “private sector”, the committee’s report is expected to pave the way for a massive competition to the services currently being offered by the state transporter.
The panel was set up by railway minister Piyush Goyal after Railway Board chairman VK Yadav flagged private trains in the government’s 100 days’ agenda.
The recommendations put out for stakeholder consultations have proposed that Indian as well as global players, with experience in railway or travel and tourism sectors be permitted, provided they have a minimum net worth of ₹450 crore. Other performance parameters, such as a maximumpermissible 15-minute delay, beyond which passengers will have to be compensated, have been proposed. On the IRCTCoperated Tejas trains, a similar facility has been offered.
The routes have been divided into seven clusters with a clear plan to develop infrastructure in less-utilised stations such as Panvel near Mumbai and Tilak Bridge and Okhla in Delhi for running long-distance trains.
The train routes have been primarily identified on Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Kolkata routes as the railways is hopeful of freeing up tracks by December 2021, when both Eastern and Western Dedicated Freight Corridors will become fully operational and take over the burden of handling goods traffic. The railways has also approved the plan to improve the existing tracks on these two routes to allow trains to run at 160 kmph, which has been proposed as the speed limit for private trains.
Full report on www.toi.in
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