NEW DELHI: Trains running on the Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Kolkata routes will be free from waitlisted tickets in the next five years, Chairman Railway Board, Vinod Kumar Yadav said on Monday.
Speaking at a press briefing, Yadav said the railways is working on three additional dedicated freight corridors at an estimated cost of about Rs 2.6 lakh crore over the next 10 years which will help the national transporter free up the current tracks to run enough passenger trains so that no traveller gets wait-listed.
"Passengers could expect to be free of waiting list within the next five years on the two busiest routes of Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah, where dedicated freight corridors (DFC) construction is under works and is expected to be completed by 2021," Yadav said.
He said the vision of railways was that when DFC is completed, the existing routes will be completely free of freight as a result of which passenger trains can be run on demand.
"The work to upgrade (train speed) on the route to 160 kmph has already been sanctioned and will be done in the next four years," he said.
He also said the thrust of the railways would be to commission DFC's.
While the Bhadan-Khurja section (194 km) of Eastern DFC has been completed and commercial trials have started from October 2019, the Rewari-Madar section (305 km) of Western DFC has also been completed and commercial trial runs have started from December 27, 2019.
Yadav also said that approval to increase average speed of passenger trains by 60 per cent has been given which will make journeys by Rajdhani train fully overnight.
He also said 194 trains have been upgraded to Utkrisht standard in 2019-20, and 78 new train services have been introduced between April-October 2019.
As many as 120 pairs of Integral Coach Factory (ICF) trains have been converted to faster and safer Linke Hofmann Busch (LHB) by utilizing 156 LHB rakes, and 104 passenger trains have been converted into Mainline Electric Multiple Unit (MEMU), he said.
He also said 38,331 bio-toilets have been installed in 11,703 coaches from April-November 2019, taking the total numbers of bio-toilets to 2,34,248 fitted in 65,627 coaches.
Yadav also said that in the coming year, railways will use artificial intelligence to curb crime on the railway network.
While CCTV surveillance system was installed at over 500 stations, 58,600 coaches in mail/express trains will also have the facility soon.
"We will put CCTV in all these coaches in corridors and above the door. We have over 6,100 stations in total, all will have CCTV. By March 2022, all stations will be covered. And among the coaches planned in the first phase, tenders have been invited for 7,020 coaches and 6,100 stations. This should be done by next year; remaining coaches will be done by March 2022," he said.
He said this issue was discussed in the Parliamentary standing committee meeting on Monday.
"In addition with all the CCTVs getting installed, we should use AI and face recognition software to use analytics to recognise the faces of criminals and nab them."
"We want to use AI and technology to curb crime on the railway network," he said.