Railway gets ₹13,000-cr for upgrading tracks

The Railway Ministry has secured a sanction of ₹13,000 crore to decongest the busiest routes of freight train traffic, giving more space to passenger trains, stated Railway Board Chairman Rajiv Kumar Yadav. He said that the existing network of Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah will be made free of freight to the maximum extent to provide enough capacity to run passenger trains at 160 km per hour. The move has been aimed at plying trains to meet the demand on their routes, and the infrastructure will also be upgraded simultaneously. The ministry is working to complete three dedicated freight corridors with a combined length of approximately 6,000 km in the next five years. These are the Delhi-Chennai route known as the North-South corridor, Mumbai to Howrah called the East-West corridor, and the Kharagpur to Vijaywada or the East Coast corridor. Dedicated freight corridor between Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah is 3000 km, which is the busiest route even among the golden quadrilateral and golden diagonal and the task of upgrading these routes will be completed by 2021, said the chairman.