Union Minister of Railways Ashwini Vaishnaw has said that Indian Railways is moving towards four-laning the entire high-density railway routes. In a social media post, Mr Vaishnaw said that there are seven high-density routes spread over nearly 11 thousand kilometres and carry a major share of the country’s rail traffic.
The seven high-density routes are, Delhi-Howrah, Howrah-Chennai, Chennai-Mumbai, Mumbai-Delhi, Delhi-Chennai, Mumbai-Howrah and Delhi-Guwahati. Mr Vaishnaw said these routes accounts for around 41 percent of railway traffic while covering 16 percent of the railway network.
The Minister said that the expansion of these routes is significant as it will help create more capacity across the network and support the future growth of passenger and freight traffic. He also underlined the environmental and economic advantages of rail transport over road transport.
Mr Vaishnaw said that under the leadership of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the four-laning of these key routes is part of a larger effort to build a railway network with greater capacity, lower transport costs and cleaner mobility.
