Railway allocation for Maharashtra 13.5 times what UPA gave: Vaishnaw

Railway minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Wednesday said Rs 15,940 crore has been allocated in the Union Budget for railways in Maharashtra, claiming that this amount is 13.5 times the average outlay during the UPA years, which was Rs 1,171 crore.

“It is almost a proper special package,” the railway minister said.

Claiming that the investment in various railway works and projects in Maharashtra is nearly Rs 1,30,000 crore, Vaishnaw called their progress in the state “very nice”. Of this, Rs 81,500 crore is being spent on laying new lines, track doubling and Gati Shakti work, he said.

He said the 508-km-long bullet project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad should not be considered a normal transport project, stressing that it will have a multiplier impact on the economy of the cities on its route.

About 320 km of viaducts of the bullet train project are ready, and the work on the 21-km-long undersea tunnel and the underground station at Mumbai’s Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) is going on at full pace, he said.

The railway minister said they have planned to add 250 more services to Mumbai’s suburban system in the next five years. The Central Railway and Western Railway now run 3,200 services daily in the metropolis and ferry more than 70 lakh commuters.

Vaishnaw said the increase in the number of services would be achieved through 10 projects focusing on reducing “headway between two trains to 150 seconds from current 180 seconds, reducing cross movement of trains and segregation of suburban and long-distance train traffic”.