Railways in india need a major push..
I think India lags with some bold proactive instincts as far as showing the urgency to immediatly improve its basic infrastructure. Being an Indian and one who has never travelled abroad (except Nepal) till date and one who keeps seeing/reading/listening to news about the advancements in rail transport, I feel we are losing a major plus to getting greater amounts of investments into the country by missing on some bold infrastructure initiatives. If one were to look at motivation then we need to just peep at our immediate neighbours - China. It is giving a massive push to better infrastructure. Although to the rest of the world the official word is the impending Olympic games in Beijing next year but it is serving its purpose to shortening the travel times and it is perfect for an investor.
I was recently reading couple of contrasting articles from Businessline and Rediff.com on the Chinese Railways and the Indian Roads. China is in the midst of launching a slew of fast train services(bullet trains) linking some of its major business hubs. They are suppose to clock speeds close to or ine xcess of 250 kmph ushering in an era of high speed train travel across the booming Chinese economy. China is expecting to launch 500 high speed train services by the end of 2007. This is a massive transition considerign that China had coal based steam engines in early 1990's and had trains running on an average speed of 50 kmph as late as 1997. This definetly has lead to increasing interest and usage of rail transport and can be seen from the data whereby China as of 2006 accounted for a quarter of the world's total railway transport volume, while its total rail lines is only 6% of the world's total length.
Now map this growth with India's rail growth. We have been trying to electrigy and convert our meter gauge system to brad gauge for the last 4 decades. This has been riddled with massive roadblocks like political obstructions based on region, land acquisitions bottlenecks, lack of desire, pending legal cases, emergence of other thrust areas and due to all these escalating costs.
Indian railways although was doing poorely in the late 1990's but has somewhat being revamped with a new emphasis given on cost cutting and better utilization of existing resources, has clearly lost the plot. Indian Railways being the 4th largest network is very slow. It has lead it to loose of precious business both frieght and passenger volumes. The formation of the NHAI (National Highway Authority of India) in early 2000 was a clear setback and the opening of the Indian skies to private air carriers lead to a massive spurt of passenger traffic through airlines. NHAI had a clear agenda and embarked on an ambitious drive to build world class roads, ensuring big advantages of using road traffic for both passengers and freight carriers.
The existing track speeds of around 100 kmph (at many places it is less also) is clearly historical. Passengers need quick and quality transit. Hence when i read a recent news article about Indian Railways conducting feasibilty studies on about 6 corridors for Bullet Trains, I felt the need to act fast. It should be done under a separate sub committie with lot of powers/freedom and definite target to achieve. It will then be able to see the light of the day int he near future otherwise bythe time it decides to build bullet trains at 200 or 200 kmph, the world must be travelling at above 750 kmph on an average and it will be redundant.
India need to imbibe the capability to think big and act big.That is the only sure shot answer to our Rail Infrastructure problems. Mr. Lalu Prasad/Railway Board - listening......
I think India lags with some bold proactive instincts as far as showing the urgency to immediatly improve its basic infrastructure. Being an Indian and one who has never travelled abroad (except Nepal) till date and one who keeps seeing/reading/listening to news about the advancements in rail transport, I feel we are losing a major plus to getting greater amounts of investments into the country by missing on some bold infrastructure initiatives. If one were to look at motivation then we need to just peep at our immediate neighbours - China. It is giving a massive push to better infrastructure. Although to the rest of the world the official word is the impending Olympic games in Beijing next year but it is serving its purpose to shortening the travel times and it is perfect for an investor.
I was recently reading couple of contrasting articles from Businessline and Rediff.com on the Chinese Railways and the Indian Roads. China is in the midst of launching a slew of fast train services(bullet trains) linking some of its major business hubs. They are suppose to clock speeds close to or ine xcess of 250 kmph ushering in an era of high speed train travel across the booming Chinese economy. China is expecting to launch 500 high speed train services by the end of 2007. This is a massive transition considerign that China had coal based steam engines in early 1990's and had trains running on an average speed of 50 kmph as late as 1997. This definetly has lead to increasing interest and usage of rail transport and can be seen from the data whereby China as of 2006 accounted for a quarter of the world's total railway transport volume, while its total rail lines is only 6% of the world's total length.
Now map this growth with India's rail growth. We have been trying to electrigy and convert our meter gauge system to brad gauge for the last 4 decades. This has been riddled with massive roadblocks like political obstructions based on region, land acquisitions bottlenecks, lack of desire, pending legal cases, emergence of other thrust areas and due to all these escalating costs.
Indian railways although was doing poorely in the late 1990's but has somewhat being revamped with a new emphasis given on cost cutting and better utilization of existing resources, has clearly lost the plot. Indian Railways being the 4th largest network is very slow. It has lead it to loose of precious business both frieght and passenger volumes. The formation of the NHAI (National Highway Authority of India) in early 2000 was a clear setback and the opening of the Indian skies to private air carriers lead to a massive spurt of passenger traffic through airlines. NHAI had a clear agenda and embarked on an ambitious drive to build world class roads, ensuring big advantages of using road traffic for both passengers and freight carriers.
The existing track speeds of around 100 kmph (at many places it is less also) is clearly historical. Passengers need quick and quality transit. Hence when i read a recent news article about Indian Railways conducting feasibilty studies on about 6 corridors for Bullet Trains, I felt the need to act fast. It should be done under a separate sub committie with lot of powers/freedom and definite target to achieve. It will then be able to see the light of the day int he near future otherwise bythe time it decides to build bullet trains at 200 or 200 kmph, the world must be travelling at above 750 kmph on an average and it will be redundant.
India need to imbibe the capability to think big and act big.That is the only sure shot answer to our Rail Infrastructure problems. Mr. Lalu Prasad/Railway Board - listening......
