Premium growth through Indian Railways
Mohd Jamshed, Indian Railways: Reforms To Bring Paradigm Shift : Railways is buoyed up, and eager to secure double digit growth. Key to this is lower, competitive freight rates and capacity augmentation. This boosts India's industrial growth, and has boosted IR's freight earnings last year. W & E DFCs will cut freight rates, scale up capacity and free up valuable space on highly choked passenger routes. IR wants 3 more DFCs on highly saturated routes but there is no progress.
IR is diversifying freight and integrating into consumer and agricultural logistics with new warehouses, cold stores, MM logistics hubs, customer sidings & rakes. To augment freight capacity, it has taken loans to tackle pending work like signalling, doubling & tripling, overdue track renewal & bridge repairs, level crossings, broad gauging and high-power loco production. Station modernisation, digitisation and electrification pay for themselves.
This leaves the passenger side. Good work has been done on safer coaches, passenger amenities, cleaner platforms, sanitation, more AC3 coaches, new brands of trains & bullet trains. Incremental revenue can pay for some upgrades. Centre & state govts will have to contribute generously for uneconomic parts like suburban rails and backward areas linkages and to keep fares very affordable.
Indian Railways needs to hurry up. Uday, Humsafar, Talgo-type trains, fast tracks, bullet trains, new stations, doubling and DFCs, digitisation, signalling, full electrification, connectivity and safety — are the future of IR.
New Passenger trainsets: Train-18 & Train-20
-------------------------------------------------
Train-18 & Train-20 are revolutionary. Prototype of Train-18 will come in 2018. Train-20 (Talgo-type without tilting) is at drawing stage. They feature air-conditioning, automatic doors, bio-vacuum toilets, fully enclosed gangways and wifi. They are faster (aerodynamic, quick to halt, hit top speed) and safer (less stress on couplings, wheels, brakes and tracks). Locos & power car are done away with (3 per Shatabdi), so each train carries more passengers per length.
Train-18's coaches are modified LBH coaches. (Existing LBH coaches can be converted into Train-18). Alternate coaches are fitted with under-slung power units. Coaches are wholly manufactured in India, using existing production infra. Coaches have modern finish, superior braking (regenerative, electronic control) and distributed air-conditioning & venting system. Solar modules can be attached. See below.
Mohd Jamshed, Indian Railways: Reforms To Bring Paradigm Shift : Railways is buoyed up, and eager to secure double digit growth. Key to this is lower, competitive freight rates and capacity augmentation. This boosts India's industrial growth, and has boosted IR's freight earnings last year. W & E DFCs will cut freight rates, scale up capacity and free up valuable space on highly choked passenger routes. IR wants 3 more DFCs on highly saturated routes but there is no progress.
IR is diversifying freight and integrating into consumer and agricultural logistics with new warehouses, cold stores, MM logistics hubs, customer sidings & rakes. To augment freight capacity, it has taken loans to tackle pending work like signalling, doubling & tripling, overdue track renewal & bridge repairs, level crossings, broad gauging and high-power loco production. Station modernisation, digitisation and electrification pay for themselves.
This leaves the passenger side. Good work has been done on safer coaches, passenger amenities, cleaner platforms, sanitation, more AC3 coaches, new brands of trains & bullet trains. Incremental revenue can pay for some upgrades. Centre & state govts will have to contribute generously for uneconomic parts like suburban rails and backward areas linkages and to keep fares very affordable.
Indian Railways needs to hurry up. Uday, Humsafar, Talgo-type trains, fast tracks, bullet trains, new stations, doubling and DFCs, digitisation, signalling, full electrification, connectivity and safety — are the future of IR.
New Passenger trainsets: Train-18 & Train-20
Train-18 & Train-20 are revolutionary. Prototype of Train-18 will come in 2018. Train-20 (Talgo-type without tilting) is at drawing stage. They feature air-conditioning, automatic doors, bio-vacuum toilets, fully enclosed gangways and wifi. They are faster (aerodynamic, quick to halt, hit top speed) and safer (less stress on couplings, wheels, brakes and tracks). Locos & power car are done away with (3 per Shatabdi), so each train carries more passengers per length.
Train-18's coaches are modified LBH coaches. (Existing LBH coaches can be converted into Train-18). Alternate coaches are fitted with under-slung power units. Coaches are wholly manufactured in India, using existing production infra. Coaches have modern finish, superior braking (regenerative, electronic control) and distributed air-conditioning & venting system. Solar modules can be attached. See below.
Railways On High Growth Path; Reforms To Bring Paradigm Shift: Mohd Jamshed, Railway Board
25
Shared publicly
Hide 19 comments
- ☻ Proactive policies of Govt and IR are showing results. IR has increased cargo and passenger numbers after a gap of years. The newly commissioned track is garnering more freight which is doing longer distances. Govt's focus on changing passenger experience is garnering enthusiasm of rail travellers. Reserved passengers are paying more.
☻ IR is the only affordable nationwide carrier. It's expansion only makes it more so. So despite severe road and airline competition, the huge waiting list for bookings shows it has appeal among poor & aspiring middle classes.
☻ IR has sky-high plans to capture 45% of total traffic. In process of making its vast investment, it will spruce up demand and spike GDP. So (perhaps) govt should leverage its balance sheet to raise funds to do more, much faster.
☻ Balancing and re-skilling staff in the transition period is an arduous challenge. Its expansion into uncharted areas like J&K and NE can employ 60,000 more field employees. OTOH, it will shed employees by adopting advanced technologies like signalling, digitisation, automation, modern stations.
☻ The spurt of rail accidents has had a salutary effect on safety. IR has become a firm believer of safety, modernisation and passenger amenities. Chairman of IR (who was Air India Chief) says IR can learn from airline safety standards, as they are the best in India. IR is spending money on crowded suburban stations because of safety concerns, which earlier it would not have.
☻ IR is trying to improve customer service and profitability. IR is amenable to offering food as per customer preferences like pre-cooked or ready-to-eat branded food, good value food or food from a platter. Its data analysis unit would like to use from data of 20 million passengers to target advertisement and earn extra revenue.
REPLY 29w - Interview: Piyush Goyal Railways minister
What were your big priorities then and how have you done?
First has to be safety. My resolve to make a permanent difference to safety is only getting stronger And the second is to bring "the charm back to rail travel". I want to make rail travel once again a delight. I realise that a lot of thought and work was done by earlier rail ministers under this government, so my job is much simpler than starting with a clean slate.
At the first meeting I was able to decide to completely stop manufacturing ICF (Integral Coach Factory) designed coaches. This will stop by June 2018 and we will only make LHB (Linke Hofmann Busch) coaches. Of the two, LHB coaches are sturdier, and we know from experience that LHB coaches have not led to fatalities after an accident.
However LHB itself is a 30-year-old design and world has moved to aluminum and stainless steel, which are lighter and have more safety features. We are looking at train sets where the train sets is joined up and presented as one train. I have sent out teams to interact with companies around the world to assess the latest technologies. We want to connect Indian railways with the most modern technologies.
What about unmanned level cossing?
Amount of underpasses and Road Over Bridges (ROBs) done in the last three years is unprecedented. I took a decision that by next September, we will make sure that if at all there are any unmanned level crossings in the main routes, they will be manned.
What about signalling?
About three months ago, signalling people were asked to give me a presentation — "What is the most modern signalling system in the world and to see how we can implement it here?" They said that ETCS (European Train Control System) is the most modern signalling system in the world, and version 2 was slightly superior than version 1. Their plan was to install ETCS over the next 20 years. But I insisted that railways will go quickly for 100% ETCS over the next six years. I also wanted to give contract to one supplier so he benefits from economies of scale, and manufactures everything in India.
There will be strong competition among suppliers. Six companies in the world that make ETCS, came to our meeting. I interacted and said, “Sell it to us at a loss because then you will become a world leader.” In the whole world today only 20,000km of ETCS has been installed. India will do 60,000 route km (or 118,000 line km) in six years, and after six years we would have expanded our network by another 40-50%, looking at the speed at which we are doubling and adding new lines. So from sixth to tenth year there is potential to do more. By that time the world will start accepting ETCS because prices would have fallen, and India will have the advantage to supply to the rest of the world.
With ETCS, fog problem will be history. In fog too trains will run at full speed because trains can talk to each other electronically. I’ll add hugely to safety and to line capacity. It’s the cheapest way to add line capacity—without land acquisition and tracks—because headway today between two trains is almost 15 minutes, station to station. It can come down to less than half.
I am promoting Make in India to provide jobs to people, and preparing India to export this technology because we will become the cheapest source. Finally, in order to do this, I need proper wifi across the route. When we give wifi at every station in the country, we can also have a CCTV network across the country. Now, I’ll tell you about our holistic thinking. When I take wifi to remote areas of the country, I’ll let children and women from villages around the station come to the station and use wifi free of charge on a kiosk.
The other aspect of safety, which also has a bearing on capacity utilisation and efficiency, is the track problem. What are you doing on that front?
India has a huge backlog on track maintenance, you may be aware that we could never do 2,500km (in a year). Under our government, we moved it to 3,600 for this year. But we will make history as we are going to do track renewal, maintenance, replacement of nearly 4,300km.
In my first meeting, on September 7, I did my safety review and decided to shift whatever rail we had available for track renewal. I thought, what will I get by laying new rail lines if I cannot ensure safety on old lines? Before I came from April to August the average monthly track renewal was 233km. In December, we did 470-odd km, January we did 576km track renewal, and February and March will not be any different. By March we are going to do 4,300km.
What is the optimal amount of track renewal you need to do?
We will need 5,500-6,000km every year. By 2019-end or the middle of 2020, I’ll make sure there will be no backlog in this country. Which is why we are importing steel also — SAIL not having enough capacity.
Last year you couldn’t utilise the money; it was Rs 41,813 crore in the revised estimate, down from the Rs 55,000 crore allotted.
I didn’t need it since we have extra budgetary resources also, whenever we need more capex. Another thing you must notice is that what we are trying to do will make huge savings in our investment. For instance, the preliminary estimate for the signalling system was $12 billion. I want that 12 billion to become eight billion or six billion, which is why I am throwing the carrot — 60,000 route km, 1.18 lakh line km. You mark my words, we will do it for less than $12 billion.
Unions don’t seem to be happy with some of the things you want to outsource, like printing tickets.
Why should railway not be focusing on core competence or should we be doing our own printing? I also have a plan to go 100% digital. If at all anybody wants a printed ticket, it will be available through kiosks at the railway station. I am going to give all my travelling ticket examiners a POS (point of sale) machine, I am going to give all my caterers POS machines. And to my mind it is possible as we expand our wifi network.
Your goods trains actually move at a speed of 15-18km per hour. Have you looked at this aspect — how you can make the freight business more productive by increasing this speed?
That is why we are pushing the dedicated freight corridor (DFC). Recently we approved 2,500km work on the DFC; I have a plan to identify 5,000-6,000km more for the high volume freight corridors. And as the signalling system gets upgraded, we will have more capacity on the normal routes.
Union budget has provided for suburban railway expansion in Bengaluru. Can you provide some details regarding that?
Nobody has ever cared for Bengaluru. And see the traffic, it takes two hours to go to the airport. This will be the most intelligently planned railway suburban network, because we are not focusing on land acquisition. What we have done is wherever we have land we will use that, wherever land is a problem, we will elevate. So, 68km is going to be elevated and 92km on ground.
What is the status of the bullet train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad?
Alignments have been finalised. Survey of land is done. We have given the requisition for land procurement. That process is going on. Simultaneously, the technical drawings are being prepared.
What are the other avenues for revenue generation that you are looking at?
A lot of things are happening in terms of non-fare revenue. There is huge potential of advertising across the country. There is huge amount of land that we are planning to monetise. I won’t be surprised if we assess the value of land that can be monetised, it may run into a few lakh crores. We are looking at monetising land especially around railway stations because they are economic hubs.
Even on the bullet train projects, each of the stations is going to be the hub of economic activity. Similarly across the country— take Bengaluru for example, I have written to the state government to allow us higher FSI (floor space index) under the Transit Oriented Development policy. Then, instead of an 80:20 share between the state and Centre, we can do 50:50 for the suburban project.
REPLY Feb 16, 2018 - Train 2018 explained in this video
Make in India Trains : Modi Govt to roll out 'world class' train-18 and Train-20REPLY Feb 14, 2018 - Major improvement under NDA
▬ no of coaches produced is 60% higher after 4 yrs.
▬ staff per coach produced is falling ~ 2.5x faster.
Effectively, no increase in staff for producing 60% more.
No. of COUCHES produced pa
2011-14 : 1511 to 1704 --> 4.1%pa
2014-15 : jump of 100/pa plus 11.1% pa
2015-18: 2005 to 2750 --> 11.1% pa
STAFF EFFICIENCY
2011 to 2015 --> 4.8% pa cut in staff / coach
2015- 2018 --> 13.1% pa cut in staff / coach
REPLY Feb 16, 2018 - Train-18 is a trainset : a new concept in non-suburban passenger trains/coaches
▬ distributed power (in alternate coach) so doesn't require loco!!
▬ less tensions at links between coaches when train changes speed (ie. couplers less stressed)
▬ As result, acceleration. deceleration is faster. Journey times are less
▬ Space saved in not having a loco or power car.. 3 extra coaches for passengers.
▬ Reversing is as easy as forward (ie. not very slow in reverse)
▬ Failure of some power units, etc will not render the train immobile.
REPLY Feb 17, 2018 - Train-18 prototype comes in 2018 ... is entirely sourced from India
Train-20 prototype comes in 2020... is state of art ..IR needs global tech partner.
REPLY Feb 16, 2018 - Features of LBH coaches with added comfort, fully sealed gangway, AC, 160kmph speed. Driver cab at each end.
REPLY Feb 16, 2018 - Train-18 is made by converting existing LBH coaches, by adding a power unit under the floor. So structure is stainless steel. Train-20 will be light weight or aluminium.
It takes 45s & 1km to halt from 160kmph.
It takes ~60s & 830m to hit top speed from nil
From halt to 160kmph to halt, it loses 1min
5 halts of 3min, and 1600km journey, totaltime
10hrs + 5* (3+1)min = 10hs 20min
REPLY Feb 16, 2018 - Features illustrated: automatic doors, vacuum bio-toilets (better than bio-toilets as don't get blocked), wifi
REPLY Feb 16, 2018 - Feb 16, 2018
- Feb 16, 2018
- Feb 16, 2018
- Feb 16, 2018
- Traction bogie:
Heavier brake calipers as its wheels are power driven.
Note the heavy brake calipers (purple) + regenerator.
Latter converts wheel movement into power and reduces the need to use brake discs. Power is sent back to the grid.
REPLY Feb 16, 2018 - Fiat Bogie (non traction bogie)
Assembly without suspended motor.
Has brake discs but doesn't have brake calipers
REPLY Feb 16, 2018 - Has pneumatic and electronic control on both traction and fiat bogies. Electronic control ensures the brake is applied at the same time.
REPLY Feb 16, 2018 - Uniform distribution of air conditioning. Air-venting is controlled electronically. As every other coach is powered, power cables to operate air-conditioning come from powered coaches.
REPLY Feb 16, 2018 - Power cable comes from powered coach to unpowered coach. Some coaches have solar modules
REPLY Feb 16, 2018 - Feb 16, 2018
Budget -- Complete modernisation of Indian Railways' entire signalling system, including automation, comes to whopping cost of Rs 78,000cr. This and other safety measures could be in the forthcoming budget.
▬ electronic interlocking systems
▬ European Train Control System Level-2
▬ mobile train radio communication systems
To:
○ Enhance safety
○ Speed up train movement in a congested areas
○ Reduce working expenses
REPLY Feb 16, 2018
Budget -- CCTV in all fast speed passenger trains, and all stations
"All Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duronto train coaches are to be fitted with CCTVs -- one each on the (two) entry gates and two in the gallery (corridor). Rs 3,000 crore was allocated in the Budget to install CCTV in more than 11,000 trains. This would be extended to all the premier and suburban services and the 8,500 stations."
REPLY Feb 16, 2018
Budget -- has a big mention for Mumbai and Bengaluru suburban rail
▬ Govt. has minimised the cost of land procurement in Bengaluru and has planned to elevate the railway line (68km out of 160km) wherever we don't have existing land with the railways, making the process easier and faster.
REPLY Feb 16, 2018 - Overnight inter-city travel by trains could soon be at 200-250 kmph
♦ Some journeys can be done over-night with fast trains(>200kmph) and don't need bullet speeds. At least 50% will be shaved of times of fast trains through HS corridors
♦ IR will announce new 10,000km high speed corridors. Railways will build many short routes where IR can out-compete airlines.
► Twin track will hoisted on single pillars along NH, and on existing railway land
► Land acquisition is largely avoided, halving project cost to Rs 100cr/km
► Faster projects with better control on costs will revive railways at the earliest
Semi-HSR and bullet tracks
♦ IR is committed to upgrading select railway tracks— on major trunk routes— to semi-HSR. It will start with upper Q.
♦ Bullet train corridors of say 4500 km will be built. It may be additional to HS corridor or part of total 10,000 km.
https://www.hindustantimes.com/mumbai-news/high-speed-bullet-trains-likely-to-run-on-short-rail-corridors-across-india-not-long-distance-routes/story-6tqfwSuPnJP9zrWTA53GMM.html
REPLY Feb 16, 2018
Budget -- State-wise railways allocation, new works and ongoing works
REPLY Feb 16, 2018 - SMART COACHES - on upgraded Tejas Express
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Rail Coach Factory (RCF) will build 107 SMART coaches or 6 train rakes in 2018/19 @ Rs 3cr per coach!!
Trains will speed up to 200km/hr. They will have strong safety due to its LBH platform and airline-like comfort, cleanliness and safety:
• reclining, comfortable seats
• smart windows (automatic blinds) & adjustable lights
• bio-vacuum toilets with sensor taps and soap dispenser, toilet occupancy indicator
• wi-fi enabled entertainment and GPS passenger information screen
• mobile charging and USB points at each seat
• attendant call button
• vending machines for tea and coffee
• dust sealed gangways, fire and smoke detection and suppression system
• CCTV systems
REPLY 47w
Add a comment...
No comments:
Post a Comment