In coming years, Railways will witness a lot more decrements in freight haulage bcoz of these reasons--->
*High capacity trucks carrying goods door-to-door proving to be a better transportation option than Railways.
*More and more pit-based power stations will come up—rail haulage of coal over long distances will diminish. *Petroleum products traffic will further dwindle as no. of pipelines connect refineries will increase.
*Increased...
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Electricity production from Non-conventional source of energy and increase in Number of nuclear power plants.
*Growing Importance of Inland Water ways under this current govt.
So what other alternatives does Railways has to tackle with all these issues and remain existent in future too. Few Points that I would like to suggest- 1) Railway can never become an alternative to Airlines in terms of speed & comfort so only thing which can provide it an upper hand is less Ticket fare+Punctual Running of trains. So it stop Compensating loss from other classes by increasing AC fares and bcoz of which the profitable class passengers are migrating towards other means of transportation.
2) Take some Bold decisions and increase the fare of loss making segments, Appeasement and reform can't go hand in hand. Either the Rail Minister can take populist decisions or Pro-reformist decisions, both thing can't happen simultaneously.
3) Bring the freight tariffs down to the level of Road Transportation.
4)More dependence on technology rather than recruiting more and more staffs.