(LiveMint)
Railway minister Piyush Goyal on Tuesday said that the Indian Railways is going to become a net zero-carbon emitter by 2030, given that the current action plan has proposed 100% electrification of the rail network, besides introducing renewable strategies. He added that the electrification in 2017-18 has increased seven times. The minister also said that the railways would procure around 100,000 additional wagons over the next five years, of which half of the wagon requirement will be by Coal India Limited.
Quoting Steve Jobs, Goyal said great things in business are never done by one person. Industry participation is as important in their mission as to make Indian Railways the newest, finest and safest railways network in the world. It is always a team that needs to work in partnership and the collective effort will help to achieve the common goal. The minister was speaking at Rail Contact 2018 organised by industry lobby group CII.
Speaking on Indian Railways’ scale of modernisation and transformation, the minister said, it has been able to ramp up renewal of tracks to 476 km every month. In the last 64 years, freight loading has increased by 1,344%, while passenger travel in terms of kilometers has increased 1,642%. The total investments in 2013-14 for railway infrastructure was at Rs46,000 crore, while for 2018-19 it will be Rs1.4 trillion, he added.
