Railways To Introduce 3,000 New Trains In Next 4-5 Years: Railway Min Ashwini Vaishnaw

Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw has said that he is working on a plan to introduce 3,000 new trains in the upcoming four-five years to increase the railways' passenger capacity from the current 800 crore to 1,000 crore.
According to PTI, the minister said that decreasing travel time is another target of his ministry.

Vaishnaw was cited as saying, "At present, the railways is carrying about 800 crore passengers annually. We have to increase the capacity to 1,000 crore in four to five years as the population is growing."

"For this, we need 3,000 extra trains which will make several trips to accommodate this increased number of passengers," he said.

According to railway sources, there are 69,000 new coaches available and every year it is manufacturing about 5,000 new coaches.

As per sources, with all these efforts the railways can add up to 200 to 250 new trains each year and these are in addition 400 to 450 Vande Bharat trains, which will be added in the upcoming years.

Vaishnaw said reducing travel time is another target, for which, the railways is working to enhance the speed of trains and expand the rail network.

"It is important to minimise the time taken to accelerate and decelerate a long route train because besides scheduled stoppages, it has to decrease its speed at several cautions and curves along the route," he added.

Vaishnaw said,"If we take the Delhi-Kolkata route from Rajdhani Express, and if we improve the acceleration and deceleration time at curves, stations and cautions, we will save two hours and 20 minutes from the current total travel time."

The minister said, "As many as 1,000 flyovers and underpasses have also been sanctioned and work has started at many places."

"Last year, we constructed 1,002 flyovers and underpasses and this year we have a target of 1,200," he added.