Future of the Indian Railways

High-speed rail

Feasibility studies for five high-speed rail corridors were conducted in 2009-10. A "Diamond Quadrilateral" has been planned to connect Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai with a high-speed train network. The Indian government conducted joint surveys with a Japanese government team in 2014, finally approving a corridor between Mumbai and Ahmedabad. The new high-speed service will utilise a Japanese Shinkansen system and locomotives, at a cost in the range of ₹110,000 crore (US$16 billion). India and Japan signed agreements for the project in December 2015; the Japanese government will fund 81% of the total cost with a soft loan fixed at a nominal interest rate. A special committee has recommended the trains be run on an elevated corridor for an additional cost of ₹10,000 crore (US$1 billion) to avoid the difficulties of acquiring land and building underpasses and protective fencing. Indian Railways will operate the corridor for a five-year period after its commissioning, after which it will be turned over to a private operator.

Construction is scheduled to begin in 2017 and be completed by 2023.

Semi-high speed rail

A semi-high-speed rail network will be introduced for certain important routes, including the following: Delhi-Agra, Delhi-Kanpur, Chennai-Hyderabad, Nagpur-Secunderabad and Mumbai-Goa. Initially, the trains will operate at a maximum speed of 160 km/h, which will increase to 200 km/h after the rails are strengthened and fenced off. The first route to open, the Gatimaan Express, began services from 5 April 2016 after safety clearances were obtained.

Locomotive factories

In 2015, plans were disclosed for building two locomotive factories in the state of Bihar, at Madhepura (diesel locomotives) and at Marhowra (electric locomotives). Both factories involve foreign partnerships. The diesel locomotive works will be jointly operated in a partnership with General Electric, which has invested ₹2,052 crore (US$305 million) for its construction, and the electric locomotive works with Alstom, which has invested ₹1,293.57 crore (US$192 million). The factories will provide Indian Railways with 800 electric locomotives of 12,000 horse power each, and a mix of 1,000 diesel locomotives of 4,500 and 6,000 horsepower each. In November 2015, it was announced Indian Railways and GE would engage in an 11-year joint venture in which GE would hold a majority stake of 74%. Indian Railways would purchase 100 goods locomotives a year for 10 years beginning in 2017; the locomotives would be modified versions of the GE Evolution series. The diesel locomotive works will be built by 2018; GE will import the first 100 locomotives and manufacture the remaining 900 in India from 2019, also assuming responsibility for their maintenance over a 13-year period. In the same month, a ₹20,000 crore (US$3 billion) partnership with Alstom to supply 800 electric locomotives from 2018 to 2028 was announced.

Bio-toilets

In 2014, Indian Railways and DRDO developed a bio-toilet to replace direct-discharge toilets, which are currently the primary type of toilet used in railway coaches. The direct discharge of human waste from trains onto the tracks corrodes rails, costing Indian Railways tens of millions of rupees a year in rail-replacement work. Flushing a bio-toilet discharges human waste into an underfloor holding tank where anaerobic bacteria remove harmful pathogens and break the waste down into neutral water and methane., which can then be harmlessly discharged onto the tracks. Indian Railways plans to completely phase out direct-discharge toilets by 2020-2021. All new coaches will be installed with bio-toilets from 2016, with older rolling stock to be gradually retrofitted.

Wi-fi at stations

In September 2015, the Indian Railways and Google announced a joint initiative to deliver high-speed wi-fi access across 400 major railway stations. The first 100 stations will be connected to the network by the end of 2016, with Mumbai Central station the first to be connected. The Railtel-Google free high-speed public WiFi service is currently available at Mumbai Central, Pune, Bhubaneshwar, Bhopal, Ranchi, Raipur, Vijayawada, Kacheguda, Ernakulum Junction, Thiruvananthapuram, Vishakhapatnam, Jaipur, Kanpur, Lucknow, Gorakhpur, Patna, Guwahati, Ujjain, sealdah and Allahabad.

Expansion of trackage electrification

In November 2016, the Indian Railways launched "Mission Electrification," a programme intended to electrify 90 percent, or roughly 52,000 km of the network's trackage, by 2020. 28,000 km of trackage had been electrified by 2016, equal to about 42 percent of the Indian Railways' total trackage; this equates to about 50 percent electrification for passenger lines and about 67 percent for goods lines. The programme is estimated to save the network roughly ₹10,000 crore (US$1 billion) annually by 2020.

Safety upgrade

A ₹100,000 crore (US$15 billion) "National Rail Safety Fund" for a complete safety upgrade by 2022 was announced in the 2017 Union Budget; among other improvements, the programme would eliminate unmanned level crossings by 2020.