Mission RAFTAAR- An Initiative By Indian Railway

Mission RAFTAAR- An Initiative By Indian Railway

India has the largest Railway Network in the world. Recently Indian Railway has launched a mission to increase the amount of levy from the sector by enhancing customer satisfaction. The mission is named as 'Raftaar' as the motto of the mission is to raise the speed of both of passenger carrying and freight carrying trains. The mission is handled by a 'Cross Disciplinary Mobility Directorate' of the Railway Board. Increased speed can increase the efficiency and productivity of the railway sector and can ensure the utilization of assets.

Steps Taken- Under this mission, the busiest route of Ghaziabad-Allahabad-Mughalsarai was chosen first to increase the speed. On that routes, Main Line Electric Multiple Units(MEMU) and Diesel Electric Multiple Units(DEMU) trains has replaced the local trains.These trains can increase it's speed by 20KMPH in comparison to the local trains.After the successful implementation of the mission some other routes are also selected by the Railway.At present, this section is free from conventional trains.The Railway Ministry has set some targets to do this replacement on the selected routes. These selected routes are Delhi-Mumbai, Delhi-Howrah, Howrah-Chennai, Chennai-Mumbai, Delhi-Chennai and Howrah-Mumbai(known as Golden Quadrilateral Routes). These routes carry 58% of freight traffic and 52 of coaching traffics as these are the principal routes of India.
Strategy of Railway- The mobility Directorate is set up in 2016 to carry forward the mission. Various Strategies are taken to overcome the problems due to movable and fixed infrastructure, operational practices and institutional mechanisms. Railway plans to develop congestion free seamless routes. The development works are made to fulfill the needs of the zones.Setting up an operating system is also under consideration to develop the capability of achieving maximum speeds in less time. Apart from that, quick acceleration and deceleration capability to reduce transit time are also matter of concern.
Mechanism for Implementation- Railway has planned to follow a mechanism for the successful functioning of this mission. The routes will be the primary unit for decision working against the existing practice. The shift can be beneficial for the development of routes to achieve the goals of mission Raftaar. The main features of the mission are

• Planning and Sanction of Works- Proper planning of the work is necessary and the plan should be made very carefully.
• Finance- EBR-IF must provide fund for the work.
• Execution- Execution of the mission must be done route wise. One execution authority must take the whole responsibility of this execution by deploying various engineering technology. An advanced technology can help to reduce the execution time as well as can minimize the requirement of the interruption of train movement in case of traffic. These chosen routes are very busy. Hence minimum inconvenience with maximum satisfaction of the passengers must be there. A Traffic Block Optimization system is developed on an IT platform to provide the essential environment to execute the goals.
• Human Capital- Human Capital is another key resource to execute the mission. The staffs must be given proper training to operate and maintain the latest technology machines.