Railway Budget 2019: Key highlights of pre-election budget allocation

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The big and swank Train 18 maintenance at Virar, a Mumbai-Delhi train journey in 12 hours by raising of speed to 160 kmph/200 kmph on existing New Delhi-Mumbai route (incl. Vadodara-Ahmedabad), funds for the massive Mumbai Urban Transport Project 3A even before it gets fully approved, a new rail terminus at Jogeshwari and Panvel, and a large amount of money for replacement of the ageing old road over bridges and foot over bridges of Mumbai are the key highlights of the pre-election interim budget allocations presented by Railway Minister Piyush Goyal in the Parliament on Friday.

Besides allocating money for various interesting projects in the interim budget, the document for Western Railway has also allocated a sum of Rs 5 crore for setting up of maintenance depots for trainsets at Virar. "Though technically, local trains and multiple electric units are also a set of trains, a trainset in Indian Railways is as of now only Train 18. There are future plans to run this swank train in the Mumbai-Ahmedabad sector and these could be their preparatory works," a senior official said.

The Mumbai Urban Transport Projects (MUTP) 2, 3 and 3A have got a significant amount of money, including Rs 244.92 crore for MUTP2, Rs 283.78 crore for MUTP 3 and Rs 50 crore for yet to be sanctioned MUTP3A. This totals up to Rs 578.7 crore.

While projects under MUTP2 includes Diva-Thane, CSMT-Kurla 5th, and sixth line, Panvel Karjat doubling and Mumbai Central Borivli sixth lines, project 3 consists of new AC trains, new rail corridors, the 3A project is massive and includes Kalwa-Airoli project and more corridors and trains.

Funds allocated to central Railway amounts to Rs 7672 crore whereas funds for Western Railway amount to Rs 6128 crore.

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