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Indian Railway took on the project Raftaar to enhance speed off trains which they officially announced that it is working but in a candid admission railways has accepted that operating average speed of railways is dropped by 1kmph for passenger trains and 2kmph for freight trains in last five years.

This means that passenger trains as of now is operating at 45kmph while freight at horrible 24kmph. Such figures make Indian Railways one of the slowest in the world which is kind of shameful.

Although, railways has successfully achieved better top speeds – 130kmph to 160kmph for passenger trains and 75kmph to 100kmph for freight trains, but top speed never indicates efficiency of service as mentioned by railways itself.

Railway blame such dismal operation to overcrowding of tracks especially on main operating routes. Railway also mentions that they are under so much pressure to mobilize as much as crowd possible due to which a whopping 70,000 special trains were added in last two years. Apart from this during this period railway has added 308 trains and 1,610 coaches permanently to various trains. Frequency of various trains are also increased to ferry more and more passengers possible.

A railway official quotes – to carry such large crowd on a daily basis infrastructure should also be improved which in reality has gone up with a very slow rate. Currently there are 13000 trains with 60,000 coaches and 10,000 locomotives that runs on a daily basis which is humongous as per our current infrastructure. It is sad that we are unable to touch international speeds and it seems a far cry in near future too.