Budget 2023: Railways makes digital push to end passenger reservation woes

After getting a record Rs 2.4 trillion budgetary allocation for 2023-24, the Railways ministry will overhaul its digital infrastructure to increase ticketing and query-handling capacity by 10 times, Union Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Friday.

“We plan to improve the passenger reservation system’s back-end infrastructure. At present, the capacity of ticketing is around 25,000 tickets per minute. The target is to upgrade it to 225,000 per minute,” Vaishnaw said in a press conference.

“The capacity for attending to enquiries will also be upgraded from 400,000 per minute to 4 million per minute,” he said.

The move to overhaul the backend infrastructure for reservation has been long overdue, as ticket booking continues to be a bitter experience for millions of railway users across the country.

The Centre has made digital infrastructure a priority in the FY24 Budget. “India’s rising global profile is because of several accomplishments: unique world class digital public infrastructure,” Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in her Budget speech before announcing a slew of digital infrastructure initiatives.

The Railways will also push for a network upgrade this fiscal year. Vaishnaw said the indigenous anti-collision system Kavach will have a 5G version by December 2024.

The minister rolled out a seven-point agenda for the upcoming fiscal year.

Among the big-ticket announcements is a target to commission 7,000 kilometres of new railway tracks, which is over 50 per cent more than what the railways has been able to achieve.

The minister said the target was in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s aspiration of building 20 km of new railway tracks every day through new lines, gauge conversion, and track doubling, etc.

The national transporter will also go big on increasing speeds on the network by eliminating track-level disruptions by constructing more rail-over/under-bridges (ROBs/RUBs).

The minister said he received queries for exports of Vande Bharat components.

IN THE PIPELINE

• Plans to build 7,000 km of new tracks through new lines, gauge conversion, and track doubling/ tripling/ quadrupling at an average of 20 km/day
• Construction of 1,000 new-design overbridges and underbridges on railway tracks to eliminate track-level disruptions
• Development of 1,275 stations under Amrit bharat Scheme
• Establishment of 2,000 Jan Suvidha Kendras for daily-use convenience items at railway stations
• Overhaul in passenger reservation system to handle up to tenfold increase in ticket (250,000) and enquiries (4 mn)
• Local arts and crafts to be promoted at 750-1,000 stations
• Introduction of inter-city Vande Metro ‘shuttles’, hydrogen trains on heritage routes

‘Market borrowings in FY24 won’t impact IRFC’

After the Railways brought its market borrowings down to zero in the FY24 Budget, the minister said the Indian Railway Finance Corporation (IRFC) would remain healthy despite no financing activity in the coming fiscal year.

“IRFC’s own income is quite good because it has a strong and significantly large book. So, there is no need for IRFC to worry about its income (in the upcoming fiscal year),” Vaishnaw told Business Standard.

The minister, however, said more and more focus was being laid on using government funds to establish the foundation that would bridge India’s current infrastructure gap.

IRFC’s borrowings for railways were down by Rs 18,000 crore in the Centre’s Revised Estimates for FY23. The minister said increasing global interest rates were not a factor in the decision to slash borrowings.

Sources in the Railways said executives of the financing arm had been in talks with the Board to chalk out a plan for IRFC. The financer had so far enjoyed several low-cost borrowings for railway projects through instruments like green bonds.

With the pivot away from market borrowings for rail works, these funds may become harder to obtain.