Dr. Anirudh Gautam


The government under the leadership of Sri Modi has set the stage to catapult India into the select club of developed nations. To move India ahead, five critical policies/ plans have been put in place by the government:

a) Science, Technology & Innovation Policy 2020
b) National Education Policy 2020
c) National Railway Plan 2030 (2016)
d) Gati Shakti Master Plan 2021
e) National Research Foundation bill 2023

The above policies have a favourable impact on the Indian Transport Scenario directly and indirectly.

It is well established that mobility and logistics directly affect the pace of development of a country. Passenger and Goods mobility seamlessly through multimode transport is the need of the hour for India and the world. There is a growing demand for Mobility and Logistics as end-to-end solutions by the customers. An intermodal “Mobility as a Service” (MaaS) within cities and beyond, for both passengers and goods, to meet the needs of customers, Indian citizens and society can only be accomplished by having rail transport as the backbone. The railway is the cleanest, most efficient, safest and economical mode of transport, therefore an intermodal transport system for India which can provide seamless mobility for passengers and goods must have railways at the centre of integrated transport planning.

Indian Railways will need to interact with other transport modes and with other industrial sectors in the country. Safe, reliable, comfortable and efficient rail services will influence and benefit lifestyle, spatial planning, people’s everyday experience, health and standard of living.

India has a large network of railways and roadways and is developing waterways and marine ways (SagarMala) to provide sustainable logistics solutions and seamless passenger transport in the country. Air transport in India has also been steadily growing with new airports being constructed every year. The government of India has launched PM Gati Shakti – National Master Plan for Multi-modal Connectivity, essentially a mission to reduce the logistics costs in India and to provide seamless transportation of goods and people in India. This scheme will cut the cost of logistics to GDP to 8 per cent, which was at 14 per cent before the NDA government. Implementation of the Gati Shakti master plan will facilitate the development of a single Transport Area in India.

Gati-Shakti Master Plan execution will require the innovation and development of several new indigenous technologies. Increasing the modal share of railways in freight and passenger transport, making rail transport flexible and reducing the cost of transport by railways to make them competitive with roads are key interventions for the success of the plan. Increasing the modal share of railways in freight transport to 45% by 2030 entails the development of digital platforms for freight trains and infrastructure. Increasing the speed capability of existing infrastructure to 200 Km/h will be the key step and will require the implementation of advanced construction and maintenance technologies.

Technology development in the areas of intelligent wagons and freight trains, digital automatic couplers, digital twinning of infrastructure, and conditioning-based maintenance for rolling stock and infrastructure will help increase the efficiency of freight operations and reduction in costs. Design and development of railway stations as multimodal hubs and centres of urban development, design and development of multi-modal freight and logistics hubs around railway goods sidings, and railway connectivity to ports and inland waterways and airports will be critical to the success of the Gati-Shakti Master Plan.

RDSO has six decades of experience in developing indigenous railway technologies in multiple railway technology areas and was responsible for the indigenisation of imported technologies in track, signals, rolling stock, traction installation etc. during the period from the 1950s to 2000. Indigenisation of technologies by RDSO allowed Indian Railways to maintain a healthy operating ratio and led to the industrialisation of India in critical areas. RDSO has also been instrumental in developing technologies in rolling stock e.g. new designs of wagons, passenger coaches, track sleepers, etc. through reverse engineering and major modifications to imported designs and making them suitable for Indian conditions. In a few of the areas, clean sheet designs have been developed by RDSO. RDSO has domain knowledge in railway technologies development and many of these technologies are common to other modes of transport. RDSO is therefore well-poised to develop technologies for the implementation of the Gati-Shakti master plan. A transformation of RDSO in line with international benchmarks with sufficient investments in facilities and skilling can put RDSO in a position to take up the development of technologies for making the Gati- Shakti Master Plan a success. This will allow India to move to a pole position in railway technologies and net exporter of railway goods and services which has an annual market of Rs. 10 Lakh Crore.

This paper proposes a plan to implement the PM Gati-Shakti (PMGS) Master plan by making Indian Railways the backbone of the GS implementation vehicle. PMGS plans to increase the modal share of railways in freight transport to 50% by the year 2030 and create a single Indian transport area with seamless, multimodal transport of people and goods. This is to be accompanied by increased energy efficiency, low pollutant emissions and renewable fuels from the transport sector. PMGS also identifies Mobility-as-a-Service (MaaS) for goods and people as an important target and lowers the logistics cost from the existing 14% to 8% to achieve a global benchmark of logistic costs and make the Indian Industry competitive.

A National Railway Research and Innovation Plan (NRRIP) needs to be drawn up under the Gati-Shakti Master Plan of India. NRRIP will delineate how technical and operational innovation can transform the Indian Railways’ contribution to mobility in India & the Indian sub-continent, addressing the needs of railway users, the economy and society, and protecting natural resources and the environment. This paper presents the salient features of the NRRIP.

RDSO will be the nodal agency for the implementation of NRRIP by gathering all the sector participants with the mission of delivering an articulated vision of the Indian Railways future. National Rail Plan, Gati-Shakti Master Plan, STIP202, NEP2020 and NRF2023 inspire the NRRIP. The vision of NRRIP is:

Indian Railways will be the backbone of the intermodal Mobility as a Service (MaaS) for both passengers and goods in India and the Indian Subcontinent.”

Main Challenges

1. The main challenge facing Indian Railways is the poor state and undercapacity of its infrastructure, i.e. railway tracks, bridges, railway traction, signalling system, railway stations and goods terminals. Upgradation of the Indian Railways track to 220 Km/h is the foremost challenge. CAG has commented adversely on the low average speeds of trains which has been accepted by the Ministry of Railways. Indian Railways track upgradation has to be done on a mission mode with necessary investments and contingency plans.

2. Indian Railways relies on scheduled maintenance of its assets, the cost of maintenance is about Rs. 45 thousand Cr per year which is 28% of its revenue. This has to be brought down to less than 10% by migrating towards condition-based maintenance.

3. There have been issues with poor reliability of infrastructure and rolling stock. This is due to poor quality of manufacturing/ construction or poor quality of maintenance. This has negatively affected the availability of the assets for commercial service and hit the bottom line of IR.

4. Indian Railways still follows the system of fixed blocks and automatic signalling. This reduces the traffic capacity of the lines. The development of an indigenous Indian Railways Train Control system (IRTCS) and Advanced Indian Railways Traffic Management System (AIRTS) is required to run trains more closely for maximum utilization of the line capacities.

5. Indian Railways is going to complete the electrification of its complete network by the year 2024. However, 70% of the electricity generated is from coal-based thermal power
plants with high levels of pollutant emissions, even higher than diesel engines. Therefore, IR needs to plan renewable grids from solar PV, solar Concentrated Solar Power (CSP), Wind and Hydro which can feed into the traction system of IR and make it fully renewable. A plan along these lines needs to be framed by IR for establishing renewable energy- based smart grids.

6. For reliability of traction, for disruptions due to disasters, and for security and strategic reasons Indian Railways require a Traction Reliability Plan with independent propelled locomotives as part of this plan. IR already has 4000 diesel locomotives which can be converted to run on renewable methanol with very low emissions. In addition, the use of hybrid power drive locomotives with fuel cells, IC engines, batteries etc. has to be included in the Traction Reliability Plan. IR needs to develop this plan quickly and roll out its implementation.

National Rail Plan published in 2016 envisages increasing the modal share of IR in freight transport by:
a. Increasing the average speed of the goods train to 50 Km/h
b. By reducing the tariff on selected commodities
c. By IR providing door-to-door service by engaging and collaborating with third-party logistics service providers
d. Development of a new design of wagons with a higher payload-to- tare ratio
e. Development of special wagons for the Balance of Other Goods commodities, in which the share of IR is minimal and where the growth rate is highest
f. Reduce the tariff structure to make the end-to-end delivery to the customer more economical and faster than the road transport mode.
g. To increase the line capacities by constructing additional rail lines and electronic interlocking and construction of dedicated freight corridors.

For Indian Railways to become the backbone of the PMGS Master Plan, it has to meet the following objectives:
1. Service on demand
2. Least travel times
3. Small waiting times
4. Low-cost
5. Safe and reliable
6. Secure from thefts, vandalism, violence etc.
7. Door-to-door service

To meet the above objectives, the following Technology Demonstrators will be required:

  • Interoperability Framework – to facilitate multimodal travel in a highly diverse environment and with many transport modes. The world of transportation service providers needs to be open-ended; it evolves at its own pace and uses multiple data formats and interfaces. Interoperability at the semantic level defines formal and explicit models of the transportation domain in an open, standard, machine- readable language that is exchanged automatically by computers.
  • Travel Shopping – to provide a comprehensive shopping application enabler which combines all modes of transport, all operators and all geographies, and provides a list of customer-relevant trip offers which are guaranteed available for booking, purchase and ticketing. This innovation will promote the integration of distributed travel operators’ data and the orchestration of services such as expert journey planning. It will be facilitated by the Interoperability Framework by enabling applications based upon different standards or coding lists, to communicate meaningfully but without costly application adaptations.
  • Booking & Ticketing – will orchestrate multiple but parallel interactions with several booking, payment and ticketing engines, including the all-important roll-back activities, should any single transaction fail, to eliminate risk. Thanks to the concept of a unique traveller identifier and wallet, the traveller will have easy access to the complete and integral components of his/her journey, including easy production of the entitlement tokens required for all ticket validation controls encountered enroute. It will radically simplify the traveller’s life, by abolishing uncertainties associated with ‘behind-the-scenes’ multiple booking, payment and ticket processes.

Also Read | Driving Operational Excellence in Railways

  • Trip-tracker – will give travellers in-trip assistance when navigating transport nodes, while also providing personalised information (related to predefined preferences) and up-to-date status reports on subsequent legs of the journey; it will support them in case of disruption, by proposing updated booking possibilities together with updated rights to travel.
  • The traveller will have full control of the journey, thanks to their own personal and secured Travel Companion, which stores and shares their personal preferences in a wallet. It will give access to all travel services needed for the journey, shopping and booking, and allow storage of the rights to travel. At the same time, retailers and operators will be able to identify and authorise the Travel Companion to access their systems and networks.
  • All the services related to individual travels and additional sensors will generate a great deal of data which has great value for both operators and end users. It will be the role of Business Analytics to manage that data.

Novel ‘big data’ technologies such as ‘intentional’ semantic information (denoting objects by properties rather than by values) will improve the capabilities to analyse distributed and heterogeneous linked data, creating numerous possibilities to generate.

Views expressed by Dr. Anirudh Gautam, Principal Executive Director – Resource & Testing, Research Designs & Standards Organisation, Ministry of Railways

 

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