Indian Railways' 100-day plan: You will get this big services at over 6400 stations soon

The Indian Railways plans to introduce Wi-Fi at all 6,485 railway stations including 4,882 balance stations in the next 100 days. The proposal for the same was made in the 100-day plan prepared by the Indian Railways. In total, 11 such proposals have been made by the Indian Railways, with instructions to initiate immediate action to implement them by August 31. The document has also proposed that within the next 100 days, cabinet approval be obtained for digital corridor for railways with provision of 10 MHz spectrum in 700 MHz frequency band for railways which would enable it to increase trains carrying capacity due to increase speed potential, improve operation during fog and improved security. 

Indian Railways also plans to bring down the travel time between the busy Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai routes by five hours with an investment of about Rs 14,000 crore in infrastructure over the next four years. The two routes account for 30 per cent of passenger and 20 per cent of freight traffic. As of now, the fastest train on the Delhi-Howrah route takes 17 hours to complete the journey while on the Delhi-Mumbai route the quickest train takes 15.5 hours. It has been proposed to reduce these to 12 hours and 10 hours respectively.

According to the proposal document, the railways has set a target to ramp up the speed of the trains on these routes from the present 130 kmph to 160 kmph. The document, a part of the 100 day-plan being prepared by union ministries on the direction of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, lays down the vision for the national transporter for the next three months.

Apart from this, the railways plans to launch a massive awareness campaign which would run across media platforms and inside running trains to encourage people to give up their subsidy voluntarily. The document also included railways' earlier proposal of handing over certain routes to private players. It has been proposed in the document to invite private operators to run two of its trains and also some routes which have low congestion and connect important tourist spots can be offered to them through Request for Proposal (RFP) and a Request for Quote (RFQ) within the next 100 days.

Other proposals are to obtain approval for elimination by 2023 of 2,568 level crossings on golden quadrilateral diagonals with assured 100 per cent funding of Rs 50,000 crore from the government; an advanced signalling system; redevelopment of 50 railways stations in 100 days and restructuring of railway board and technological revamp.