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Neither fast nor on time — CAG report delves into all that ails the Great Indian Railways

Despite heavy investment in upgradation of railway infrastructure, India’s mail & express trains crawl at 50 km per hour, stop for long durations and do not make it on time, CAG says.

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New Delhi: The Indian Railways has not managed to speed up its trains and improve punctuality despite putting in Rs 2.5 lakh crore on building infrastructure over a decade, and implementing ‘Mission Raftaar’ in 2016-17, an audit conducted by the Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has found.

A report tabled by the CAG in Parliament during the Budget session this month noted that the Railways has failed to improve its “mobility outcomes”. As part of ‘Mission Raftaar’, the Railways had envisaged to increase the average speed of passenger trains to 75 km per hour from 50 km per hour, and of freight trains to 50 km per hour from 25 km per hour by the end of 2021-22.

But, the CAG audit notes, the speed has remained almost the same for passenger trains and has reduced for freight trains to 23.6 km per hour.

“The average speed of mail and express trains and goods trains in 2019-20 was only 50.6 kmph and 23.6 kmph, respectively,” the report states.

According to the railway ministry, increasing pressure of passenger trains on the extant rail infrastructure is to blame for the slow speed.

“There has been an exponential increase in the number of passenger services, with the Indian Railways introducing around 200 trains per year on an average, without commensurate enhancement of the infrastructure works,” the ministry said in its reply to the CAG, which sought a response from the government on the declining state of affairs in the railways.

Experts describe the slow speed of trains as a matter of concern, saying that it may saddle the railways with financial problems if left unresolved.


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The ‘crawling’ express

The CAG’s assessment is based on trains operated by the Indian Railways for financial year 2019-20, when it was operating at full strength before the Covid pandemic.

Based on the time taken and distance travelled by a train between the source and destination station, the CAG calculated the average speed of 2,951 express trains running in the country.

Of these, 2.1 per cent (62) averaged a speed of more than 75 km per hour. The majority of the express trains (37 per cent) averaged speeds of 55-75 km per hour. There were 933 trains (31 per cent) with an average speed of 40-50 km per hour. About 269 or 9.4 per cent express trains averaged a speed of below 40 km per hour.

The CAG noted that there has been a marginal improvement in the speed of these express trains, but that has come at the cost of slowing down other passenger trains.

It stated that, in 2012-13, an express train would usually take 19 hours 52 minutes to cover a distance of 1,000 kilometres, which came down to 19 hours 47 minutes in 2019-20.

The non-express-passenger trains would take 27 hours 37 minutes to cover 1,000 km in 2012-13. By 2019-20, these trains were taking 29 hours 51 minutes for the same distance.

Similarly, in 2012-13, the electric multiple units (EMUs) that usually travel small distances took 1 hour 13 minutes to cover a distance of 50 km, and, by 2019-20, they were taking 6 minutes longer.

Also, there is a maximum permissible speed (MPS) up to which a train is allowed to run on specific tracks. The audit notes that this MPS hasn’t been updated for a long time.

The mythical superfast express

ThePrint scanned the time tables and distances covered of all the special trains in India — Rajdhanis, Shatabdis, Sampark Krantis, Jan Shatabdis, Humsafar Express, AC Superfast Express, Duronto Express, Gatiman Express and the Vande Bharat Express. The analysis showed that these “superfast” trains do not average a speed of even 100 kilometres/hour.

Since 2007, all these trains have levied a “superfast” fee since the average speed between the source and destination station is above 55 km per hour.

The Delhi-Jhansi Gatiman Express is the country’s fastest train covering a distance of 403 kilometres in about 4.3 hours — averaging a speed of about 93.1 km per hour.

The two Vande Bharat Express trains — one going to Shri Mata Vaishno Devi Katra and the other going to Varanasi — also average about 88 km per hour.

The Tejas Rajdhani and the normal Tejas Express trains — which run on the latest Tejas rake — average only about 78.3 km per hour and 76.4 km per hour, respectively.

The Rajdhani Express — which connects major capitals of the country to national capital Delhi — averages about 73.6 km per hour, followed by Duronto Express at 70 km per hour.

The Shatabdi Express, which connects major cities within the limit of 5-6 hours’ travel time, averages about 69.1 km per hour.

All these premium trains come with a premium price. The minimum fare in a Chennai Rajdhani for a 3rd AC berth is Rs 3,140 for a journey of more than 28 hours, while a direct flight on its lowest price day (as calculated by Google flights) will average about Rs 2,400 and would reach Chennai in 2-3 hours.

The Sampark Kranti Express trains, which were launched in 2004-05 to offer connectivity between capital cities, are an affordable substitute for the Rajdhani Express, while the Jan Shatabdi Express trains offer a substitute to the Shatabdi Express for budget travellers. The average speed of these trains on paper is 63.6 km per hour and 56.2 km per hour, respectively.

Considering the fact that so many of India’s national highways now boast a limit of 100 km per hour and there are plans to increase this by another 20 km per hour, the Indian roadways may soon start competing with the Indian Railways at least for inter-city connections if trains continue at their slow pace.

Freight trains paint another melancholic tale. Their speed over the last 5-6 years has only come down.

In 2012-13, a goods train would take 39 hours and 49 minutes to cover 1,000 kilometres, while in 2019-20, the time increased to 42 hours and 22 minutes. The average speed of a freight train has come down from 25.2 km per hour in 2009-10, to just 23.2 km per hour in 2019-20.

Freight trains are the Railways’ cash cows — the income earned from freight is twice as much as what the behemoth earns from passengers.

“The slow speed of railways is a matter of concern — especially for freight trains. The earnings from goods trains are used to subsidise passenger fares, but considering the growing competition with roadways, the railways may face tough times ahead if it continues to be slow and inefficient. If more and more cargo gets transported in trucks, railways might have to increase passenger fares, which is a political decision especially for lower class tariffs. At the end of the day, the railways might struggle financially,” said Rajat Kathuria, economist and dean of social sciences at Shiv Nadar University.

“If more and more cargo gets transported in trucks, the railways might have to increase the fares of its passenger trains, which gets politicised. At the end of the day, the railways might struggle with financial problems,” he added.

Across the world, Kathuria said, the “railways is the best contestant for ferrying cargo because of lower emissions and faster deliveries, but slow speeds may increase trucks on expressways, which is not good for the environment since our trucks consume a lot of diesel and release more emissions”.

“Dedicated freight corridors is a good step, but the railways must work on modernisation and monetisation (without necessarily selling) of its assets,” he added.

The long-term consequence of slow trains is an inefficient system, said Saon Ray, professor at ICRIER.

“For example, X amount of goods could be moved in day, but actually it is moving less than that amount. In aggregate terms, it means that the resources are being underutilised.
This means that this could, in the long run, have an impact (maybe small, but negative) on growth in the country,” Ray added.


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Punctuality issues

The CAG report noted that India’s slow express trains do not make it on time either, which means that the average speed of a train could be even slower than what’s mentioned on paper.

The Indian Railways has a 15-minute punctuality yardstick — if a train reaches the destination station within 15 minutes of its scheduled time, it is considered to be on time. Even so, the CAG audit found that, on average, only 69.23 per cent of trains reached their destinations on time, and the trend has been moving downwards.

On average, about 69 per cent of the express trains made it on time in 2008-09, which improved to 83 per cent in 2013-14. But since then, this number has been on a decline.

The CAG report noted that, in 2015-16, the Railways Complaints Management System received more than 9,100 complaints on punctuality, which rose to 20,025 in 2016-17 and 35,793 in 2017-18. By 2018-19, the number of complaints on train punctuality had shot up to 40,077.

A train is supposed to stop for about 2 minutes on average at a station, but on some busy stations, the average halt is quite high, the audit noted. “Longer and frequent stoppages create congestion at junction points and en route, which reduces overall speed. Increase in number of stoppages impedes the reduction of travel time,” the report notes.

On punctuality, the railways told the CAG that trains are delayed due to external factors not in its control. “The decline in performance is to be seen with respect to the reasons on a case-to-case basis, including external factors beyond control of railway administration. In the current financial year, up to 30 September 2021, the punctuality of Indian Railways has been recorded up to 94.29 per cent (as compared to 75.38 per cent in 2019-20),” the rail ministry said in its reply.

The CAG audit, which had analysed the critical factors influencing punctuality, noted that the external factors beyond the railways’ control accounted for delays 12.89 per cent of the time.

‘Slow project completion’

Despite an investment of Rs 2.5 lakh crore, from 2008-09 to 2018-19, on rail infrastructure, slow speed of project completion has affected plans to increase speed of trains.

About 57 per cent of the Rs 2.5 lakh crore was put in building new tracks and doubling the existing lines. “But these projects take a considerable amount of time,” the audit notes.

On average, a rail project takes about 5.3 years to complete — but a project involving doubling of tracks will complete in about 7.5 years, the audit points out. Of the 39 doubling-track projects scanned by the CAG, 22 took more than 5 years, 15 took two to five years, and only 2 projects were completed in under 2 years.

“The reasons for the lagging of ongoing maintenance works are inadequate provision of the block, absence of integrated block, higher line capacity utilisation, shortage of track machines, labour problem and fund constraints,” the report says.

(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)


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