Finance Minister Arun Jaitley in his Union Budget 2018 speech on Thursday said ₹1.48 lakh crore has been allocated to as railway capital expenditure for FY 2018-19.
Most of this money will be spent on capacity expansion, since it is a priority for the national transporter, Mr. Jaitley said.
He proposed a target of doubling 18,000 km of lines and said gauge conversion is underway to eliminate capacity constraints.
The minister said 36,000 km of rail track renewal has been targeted in the coming year while 4,267 unmanned railway crossings on broad gauge routes are to be eliminated in the next two years.
He said that India was moving towards optimal electrification of railway networks, adding, “Work on Eastern and Western dedicated freight corridor is also in progress. Maintenance of track infrastructure is being given special attention."
In addition, a new institute is to come up at Vadodara to train manpower for high-speed rail networks.
Escalators are to come up at all railway stations with footfalls exceeding 25,000, while all trains are to be progressively provided with WiFi, CCTV and other state-of-the-art amenities.
600 railway stations are to be redeveloped, said Mr. Jaitley.
For the aviation sector
Mr. Jaitley also proposed to expand airport capacity by five times, saying those who wear ‘hawai chappal’ will also be able to do ‘hawai yatra’.
UDAN, the regional airport development scheme launched in 2017, will connect 56 unserved airports and 31 unserved helipads in the country, said Mr. Jaitley. “The Airports Authority of India has 124 airports. We propose to expand our airport capacity to handle more than one billion trips a year,” said Mr. Jaitley.
