NEW DELHI: The Indian Railways made no perceptible improvement in the running speed of express trains despite spending a significant amount of Rs 2.5 lakh crore on track infrastructure between 2008 and 2019. This was revealed after the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India tabled a report in the Parliament
The railways implemented ‘Mission Rafatar’ in 2016-17 following Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s call to increase the average running speed of freight trains from 25 kmph to 50 kmph and that of mail and express trains from 50 kmph to 75 kmph by 2021-22.
The CAG in its audit report pointed out that only 0.18% improvement was made in punctuality performance of express trains and 0.61% improvement in the average speed of express and mail trains. The report also noted a decrease of 9.72% in the average running speed of goods trains.
“The average speed of mail and express trains and goods trains in 2019-20 was only 50.6 kmph and 23.6 kmph, respectively,” the report stated.
The CAG also stated that the targets in respect of average speed are yet to be achieved by the Indian Railways while it has adopted rolling stock with a rated capacity of 100 to 160kmph and tracks with maximum permissible speed (MPS) of 100-130kmph in certain sections of its networks. The CAG report said a thorough audit analysis has revealed that the scheduled speed of 97.9% of 2,951 mail and express trains were below 75kmph.
“The target of achieving 160kmph speed of coaching trains and 100kmph speed of freight trains had been fixed on several occasions between 1960 and 2016-17. The timeline to increase the speed has also been constantly revised. However, the same had not been achieved until 2019-20,” the CAG stated.
It has pointed out that even after many years of planning and targeting, there has been no change in the maximum permissible speed (MPSs) of Rajdhani and the Shatabadi trains since their induction.