The Railway Budget for 2014-15 fiscal was presented by Rail Minister D V Sadananda Gowda. Below are the highlights of the budget.
* Five Jan Sadharan trains, five premium trains and six AC express trains to be introduced
* Run of 11 trains to be extended
* Special festival trains to continue
* Open mind to correct shortcomings
* Twenty three railway projects underway in the northeast; Rs.5,116 crore allocated for this in 2014-15 – a jump of 54 percent from the previous fiscal
* Dedicated freight corridor projects to be closely monitored
* Banihal-Katra link in Jammu and Kashmir to be taken up; in the interim, a bus system has been introduced to enable travel to Srinagar on a single ticket
* Wi-Fi at select stations and on some trains
* Paperless railway offices in five years
* Diamond quadrilateral to be launched for high-speed trains; Rs.100 crore allocated for taking project forward
* Trains on select routes to be speeded up to 160-200 km per hour
* Ticketing to be further modernised to issue 7,200 tickets per minute
* Land records need to be digitised for better utilisation; PPP mode to be explored for better management and revenue
* Innovation Incubation Centre to be set up
* 4,000 women constables recruited in RPF to make travel in women’s coaches safer
* Pre-cooked ready-to-eat meals to be introduced
* Food courts to be introduced at major stations to provide regional flavour; pilot project on New Delhi-Amritsar and New Delhi-Jammu Tawi routes
* Forty percent increase in expenditure on cleanliness; CCTVs to monitor cleanliness at stations
* Special train on teachings of Swami Vivekananda
* Receipts in 2014-15 estimated at Rs.164,374 crore, expenditure at Rs.149,176 crore
* Fare revision will bring in Rs.8,000 crore; need another Rs.9,000 crore for golden quadrilateral project
* Backbone of supply chain of defence establishment
* Carry one billion tonnes of freight every year
* Decline in traffic growth in 2013-14
* Would require Rs.5 lakh crores in 10 years for modernisation
* Receipts in 2013-14 were Rs.139,550 crore; expenditure was Rs.130,321 crore
* Spend 94 paise of every rupee earned, leaving a surplus of only 6 paise
* With 12,500 trains, railways move 23 million passengers every day; equivalent to moving Australia’s population
* Target to become largest freight carrier in the world