Why has Indian Railways repeatedly failed to raise speed!

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What is more shocking is that Indian Railways has hardly added any important new line in past 30 years.

Alok Kumar Verma, IRSE (Retd.)

Why has Indian Railway repeatedly failed to raise speed on the existing trunk routes since mid 1990s?

Briefly, the answer is that the quality of maintenance of track, particularly quality of welding of rails, quality of stone ballast and fittings.

This is due to a variety of reasons: quality of contractual work, lake of supervision, insufficient traffic blocks, manpower skills and corruption etc.

What is more shocking is that Indian Railways has hardly added any important new line in past 30 years.

Whereas China has added 40,000 km of non-highspeed & highspeed lines since 1995.

On Indian Railways only doubling and gauge conversion from MG to BG.

Congestion on the trunk routes goes on becoming worse.

Trains are overcrowded, long waiting for reservations etc.

This is indeed shocking, but successive governments have ignored it more.

Upgrading the trunk routes is the best option.

This is what was planned in Vision 2020. No need for further delay.

An important advantage is that requirement of land is small for easing curves only at some curves.

Benefits start accruing quickly with the raising in stages.

For more on this, please read the full thread in the link given below –