Highlights of railway budget-2014

Here are the highlights of this Budget.

• No new increase in passenger fares and freight charges

• Bullet train in Mumbai-Ahmedabad sector

• Diamond quadrilateral for high speed trains


• Plan to hike speed of trains to 160-200 km/hr in 9 sectors

• Online booking to support 7,200 tickets per minute; to allow 1.2 lakh users log in    

    simultaneously

• Reservation system to be revamped, ticket-booking through mobile phones, post offices to be popularised

• Online platform for unreserved tickets

• Combo parking-platform tickets at stations

• Women RPF Constables to escort ladies coaches; 4,000 women constables to be inducted

• Retiring room facility to be extended to all stations

• Battery operated cars for differently-abled and senior citizens at major stations

• Feedback services through IVRS on quality of food

• Food can be ordered through SMS, phone; Food courts at major stations

• Cleanliness budget up by 40 per cent over last year

• CCTVs to be used at stations for monitoring cleanliness

• Setting up of corpus fund for stations’ upkeep; RO drinking water in some stations and trains

• Automatic door closing in mainline and sub-urban coaches

• 58 new trains and extension of 11; 864 additional EMUs to be introduced in Mumbai over 2 years

• FDI in railway projects, except in operations

• FDI, domestic investments in rail infrastructure

• Office-on-Wheels: Internet & workstation facilities on select trains

• WiFi in A1, A category stations and in select trains

• Railways university for technical and non-technical subjects

• Some stations to be developed to international standards through PPP model

• Parcel traffic to be segregated to separate terminals to make passenger traffic unhindered

• Loss per passenger per kilometre up from 10 per cent in 2000-01 to 23 per cent in 2012-13

• Solar energy to be tapped at major stations

• Highest ever plan outlay of Rs. 65,455 crore for 2014-15

• Expenditure in 2014-15 pegged at Rs. 149,176 crore