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Indian Railways Planning To Build Walls Along Tracks To Enable Better Speeds And Increase Revenue
Railway train engines on the tracks at New Delhi Station. (Ramesh Pathania/Mint via Getty Images)
Continuing with its objective of raising more revenue and providing better value for services, the Piyush Goyal-led Ministry of Railways has embarked on a new project that will allow it to potentially increase train speeds while also augmenting revenue for the national transporter. The Press Trust of India reports that the railways is looking to build walls along the tracks and also sell the space on the walls to advertisers to raise revenue.
The ministry is also in talks with contractors over pre-fabricated walls that can be installed faster at a cheaper cost. The railways is also planning to allow the contractor to earn a part of the revenue to further bring down their costs. Once in place, the walls will reduce encroachments, reduce occurrences of cattle straying onto the tracks, and help trains travel faster.
With the completion of the Mumbai-Delhi semi-high-speed corridor, the railways is planning to start with the segment, particularly in urban areas. The walls are set to be seven to eight feet tall with advertising spaces on both sides.
The railways is also looking at building soundproof walls in metro areas to reduce noise pollution. A trial run of this is underway in South Delhi, where the walls reduced the sounds of approaching trains by 20 decibels.
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