Vision 2020 - Transportation Research Group of India

Government of India
Ministry of Railways
(Railway Board)
6.7 High Speed Corridors
India is unique and alone among the major countries of the world in not having a single high-speed rail corridor
capable of running trains at speeds of over 250 kmph. High speed corridors have played a major role in
revitalization of Railways in Japan and Europe. Of late, high speed-rail networks are also getting built in China,
Taiwan and USA. Indian Railways would follow a two-pronged approach in this respect. The first approach would
be to raise the speed of segregated passenger corridors on trunk routes using conventional technology to 160 to
200 kmph. The second approach would be to identify a number of intercity routes, depending on viability, and
build state-of- the-art high-speed corridors for speeds up to 350 kmph through on PPP mode in partnerships with
the State Governments. Partnerships with the State Governments would be crucial as real-estate development
would be a key element of viability of these high-cost projects. By 2020, at least four corridors of 2000 kms would
be developed and planning for 8 other corridors would be in different stages of progress.
6.8 Organizational Reform
Professional support would be sought to study and analyze the present organization structure and suggest a
roadmap for reorganization to integrate the numerous services and departments into a cohesive organization,
committed to the Vision and capable of delivering on the challenging goals. Internal reform through
decentralization of decision-making and empowerment of the Zonal and Divisional lands in financial and project
execution matters with accountability for results would be undertaken. Reorganization in terms of business lines
such as infrastructure, freight, passenger parcel and other auxiliary services could be examined. Activities other
than core transportation activities could be corporatised to bring in the needed business focus and managerial
autonomy drawing on lessons from successful past examples like CONCOR, RITES, IRCON and IRFC, to name
a few of the PSUs of Railways, which have created enormous value for the Government after corporatisation.
The ongoing process of Accounting Reforms is seized of the issue of activity-wise costing and will aid accounting
separation these activities. By 2020, concrete steps will have been taken to manage each service as a separate
and distinct profit centre. The reform will also specifically address the issues of improvement in effectiveness and
efficiency in achieving goals and building capacity to execute projects within strict time-schedules and budgetary
limits.
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