“The Indian Railways used to have the second largest network. Now it has slipped to the third or the fourth position,” Ms. Banerjee said.
According to the Union Minister, the country was lagging behind due to lack of monetary investment in railways. “The Chinese Government has invested three billion dollars in railways,” she said, adding that the railways systems of Switzerland, Russia and some other countries are advanced owing to the money invested for their development.
Despite hindrances, Ms. Banerjee said, the Indian Railways would still try to be number one.
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If this reportage is true and that's exactly what she said, then that is scary. Yes, we can lay down a huge network of rails but what use is it if it's so slow! It takes a train about 24 hrs to cover 900km of distance from my workcity to my hometown.
I was wondering why our trains are so slow. To that, Metro Rail CE says:
Indian Railways cannot function as a 100% business oriented transportation industry so long as it is under direct Government Management. Its fare structure will need approval by various legislative bodies. Neither can Railways be freed of its social obligations to the nation. Railway will need to set up a separate Corporation/Joint Venture with Private/Public bodies who are willing to invest on such projects with long gestation period. The Corporation should take over the entire responsibility of construction of such Corridors and operation of the High Speed Trains with only ‘Safety Audit’ being with a nominated Regulatory Authority a la CRS. It may be possible to set up such a Corporation however it is bound to take time
India is poised to become a super power by 2020. It may not be out of place to imagine that the average standard of living and paying capacity of the people would have increased considerably and more passengers may be able to afford travel in high speed inter-city trains by then. As airlines cannot compete with Railways in sheer carrying capacity high speed rail travel may prove viable in the long run. Therefore, it might a step in the right direction to construct new-dedicated high-speed corridors between major cities. The future generations will then have a kind word for us.
More here
Pardon me, but that how we do analysis? With imagination? Where's the data, where are the projections, where is the summary, where are the numbers? Don't tell me they don't do numbers at high level. I mean if we can't do the math, what are we solving? But maybe I am jumping to conclusions, maybe the Indian railways undertakings are detailed and comprehensive in their objectives. It just didn't reflect in the Railways Ministers number 1 vision.
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