Visible improvement in Railways performance: Survey

Dynamic pricing policy and better resource management has improved performance of the Indian Railways, the world's fifth largest rail network, the Economic Survey said today.

"Better resource management, through increased wagon load, faster turnaround time and a more rational pricing policy, led to the perceptible improvement in the performance of the railways," the pre-Budget statement said.

The freight segment, which accounts for nearly 70 per cent revenue-earning of the railways grew by 7.4 per cent in April-November 2009 period to about 573.5 million tonnes.

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"There has been no across-the-board increase in freight rates in recent years. Railways has taken a number of steps to attract additional traffic, one of which is the dynamic pricing policy through which differential tariff is charged to take care of skewed demand," it said.

A slew of freights incentives schemes have been launched including bringing down the freight rate for export of iron ore besides measures for rationalisation of passenger fare.

For ensuring better speed, comfort and security for passengers, Duronto, a non stop super fast passenger-carrying train was introduced in September 2009.

"Seven Duronto trains have already been launched," the survey said also underlining measures for better passenger services like availability of quality food in trains, development of multifunctional complexes at 50 railway stations for better facilities and modernisation of communication system for rail safety.