National rail plan 2030 to be released in December 2020
The Rs.32,000 crore tender for 325 km high-speed Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project has been awarded by Indian Railways, Railway Board chairman and CEO Vinod Kumar Yadav told an industry webinar.
“After a very detailed discussion with Japanese government, we have made 72% of the entire contract value open to Indian contractors which includes all the civil engineering work including bridges, under-sea tunnel related contracts, whereas contracts for Japanese contractors are only limited to signal and telecom, initial rolling stock and electrical works,” he said in an update on the project.
However, he conceded that the bullet train project, being implemented with the help of Japanese government, was getting delayed due to land acquisition.
“In Gujarat, 90% land has already been acquired and remaining 10 per cent will also be available by end of December 31,” he told the ASSOCHAM webinar on ‘Indian Railways Vision for Aatmanirbhar Bharat’ on 27 Nov 2020.
Meanwhile, the final draft of national rail plan 2030 is likely to be released next month (December 2020) which includes Vision 2024 plan that would take care of infrastructure to be developed by 2030 to take care of traffic requirements of 2050, he informed.
“For last two-three years we have been working on it in an integrated manner,” added Yadav.
“The Railway is developing infrastructure in an integrated manner in such a way that we will be able to take care of traffic requirements till 2050.”
Noting that Indian Railways has done a lot of work towards ensuring safety including modernisation of signalling system, mechanised maintenance of assets in last two-three years, he said, “During the COVID-19 pandemic period, we took advantage of the adverse situation and converted into an opportunity as we carried out 200 very important safety works including maintenance of tracks which were pending for 5-6 years.”
Yadav also said that there has been a paradigm shift in last 3-4 months in the way in which business development activities and marketing initiatives have been undertaken.
The Railway’s portal for business development will provide by mid of December we are going to provide online facilities like tariff calculation, tracking consignment and others by mid-December, he announced.
The Indian Railways is doing lot of tunnelling work. There are three projects going on – Jammu-Uddhampur where last strecth is going on, then Chardham connectivity in Uttarakhand, and one project in northeast states, he said in an update on Railway projects. #tender #projects #investment #infrastructure #plan /fiinews.com
