Union rail minister Mr. Suresh Prabhu let out his ambitious railway action plan 2017-2018, which is comparable to the mini rail budget. According to the new rail plan, Indian Railway is going to launch an integrated rail mobile app soon. This app will combine 17 railway-related services (such as booking of coolie, taxi and tickets, food catering etc) on a single platform. The app is rumoured to release in May.
Not only this, the centre is aiming at adding aadhaar card as ID for online ticket reservation. Also, they’ll make provisions to deliver trucks via luggage trains running from New Delhi. The government is hopeful that this move will reduce pollution level in within the city. Since the government didn’t present a separate rail budget for this year, the railway action plan 2017-2018 will pretty much summarize the main postulates of the railway ministry’s modulus operandi.
Indian Railway Announces 6 Major Developments This Year
Image Source: Hindustan Times
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Addition of Novel Services to the Intgrated App
With the introduction of the new integrated rail app, the passengers will be able to retrieve all information pertaining to booking of tickets on IRCTC. It’ll also include travel details, ticket fare, train schedule, short stay, accommodation and taxi bookings, train time, rail route, PNR status, platform details, train catering services, train live status via Google maps, train fare, seat availability, seat positioning inside coach, emergency helpline number and first aid.
This will spare poor passengers headache, when planning their travel.
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Aadhar is Mandatory for Ticket Bookings
The Railway department will make it mandatory for passengers to use Aadhar card for booking railway tickets. This will kill two birds with a single stone—facilitate concessions in special cases (like senior citizens) and avoid fake bookings by agents. The aadhaar will serve as a valid one-time registered identity.
This rule will be enacted from 1st April 2017.
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Roll On-Roll Off Services
To boost non-fare rail revenues, the centre will flag off new RO-RO services. Under this scheme, special trains carrying loaded trucks will be run from Delhi and Gurgaon to resolve road traffic and pollution. This Thursday, the first batch of 30 trucks was dispatched in a luggage train from Gurgaon’s Harsuru station to Muradabad nagar station. Each train will accommodate up to 40 trucks at a time.
Image source: Youtube
The transport ministry claims that approximately 66,000 diesel trucks fleet through highways around Delhi. Out of these, around 40% are inter-state trucks that cause maximum carbon emission. Starting RO-RO services will ensure safe dispatch of goods on long routes.
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Railway will Digitalize its system
The centre will employ 6,000 new PoS (Point of Sale) machines and 1000 automatic ticket vending machines at ticket counters, all around the country. This decision has been taken to encourage paper conservation and digital payments.
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Common Online Payment Gateway
A common payment gateway will be developed for the new integrated app so that customers can conduct safe transactions for online services.
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Discount on Good Delivery
Seeing that good delivery is a sector where Indian railway suffered maximum losses last year, the department will offer a minimum loading discount of 35% on goods. This discount will be compensated within 45 days of operation.
What’s the Specialty of Railway Action plan 2017-2018?
Each year, the Centre launches a 150-pages long railway budget. However, breaking the 92-year old custom, Modi government incorporated the railway budget in the main budget. Therefore, rail minister Prabhu prepared a practical 100-pages long Railway action plan for this year. This will help the ministry accomplish all its goals on time.
