TRANSPORT
8.1 Transport plays a vital role in the economic development of the country. It must provide efficient and reliable transport services and it must accomplish these objectives at a minimum resource cost. The existing transport system comprises of several modes of transport amongst which rail and road transport predominate. Other
modes of transport like shipping, pipelines, air transport are also important within their specialised areas considering the size of the country and its geographical features. The growth in capacity of the modes over the past thirty-four years is set out in Table 8.1.
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8.2 It will be seen from the table that transport has recorded a substantial growth during the last thirty-four years both in the spread of the net work as well as in the output of the system. Railways have recorded a growth rate of 4.3 per cent annum in freight traffic and 3.7 per cent per annum in passenger traffic. The traffic at major ports has increased at the rate of 5.2 per cent per annum. Domestic airlines passenger traffic has recorded a growth rate of 10.5 per cent per annum. Road transport fleet has increased by 6.8 per cent per annum in respect of trucks and 5.4 per cent in respect of buses. The road net work has expanded at an annual rate of 4.5 per cent. Shipping tonnage has increased at the rate of 11.0 per cent and coastal shipping at 1.4 per cent per annum.
8.3 Despite an impressive growth in the spread of the transport network, a large number of villages in the country still lack road connections. It has been estimated that at the end of the Sixth Plan, about thirty six per cent of the villages remained without a road link and around sixty-five per cent without all-weather access roads.
8.4 Notwithstanding the continued expansion that has taken place, the capacity of the entire transportation system including the road network continues to fall short of demand for transportation. Capacity constraints have been felt in several areas. These constraints in the Railways have led to movement of bulk commodities like coal, over long distances, by road, at high cost to the economy. The road system too is under heavy strain. Inadequacy of capacity and substandard infrastructure have led to excessive transit delays, fuel wastage and higher operating costs. Seaborne traffic also has faced constraints, as port infrastructure modernisation has lagged behind changes in shipping technology and cargo handling methods. Several ports suffer from draft limitations as well. These are some of the areas where position would be rectified to the extent feasible in the Seventh Five Year Plan.
8.5 Rail and Road Transport are the dominant modes and would remain so in the foreseeable future. There has, however, been a marked shift in their relative shares in the total traffic. The share of road traffic in the total traffic has been increasing over the years; whereas in 1950-51, it accounted for eleven per cent of freight traffic and twenty-six per cent of passenger traffic, it went up to thirty-four per cent and sixty per cent respectively by 1970-71. In the more recent years, the share of road is estimated to have increased further. This continuing shift is essentially attributable on the one hand to the rail capacity constraints and on the other, to the extension of road network and the inherent advantage of road in handling non-bulk traffic. Ideally, the Railways should have adequate capacity to clear all train and wagon load traffic for long and medium leads particularly for bulk commodities while the road transport would cater essentially for small lot short haul traffic for which it is the more efficient mode.
8.6 Certain spatial demographic and economic features greatly influence the pattern of transport demand in the country. Urban population and economic activities are concentrated in metropolitan areas and a few other important cities; major coal and iron ore deposits are in the eastern part of the country, the region where most of the steel and heavy engineering industries are also located. The corridors connecting these limited number of centres thus handle massive volumes of traffic. On the rail network alone, the quadrilateral connecting metropolitan cities and its diagonals carry sixty-six per cent of the total freight traffic and fifty per cent of the total rail passenger traffic. The road traffic density on these routes is equally high. In the years to come, it may no longer be possible to service the traffic on these corridors and a feasible solution would lie in development of alternative routes as also balanced spread of economic activity in the country.
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8.7 The transport infrastructure is burdened with overaged and obsolete assets and the backlog of replacements has now assumed enormous proportions. In the Railways, about a quarter of the total length of the track is overdue, for renewal and equally substantial track kilometrage would become overaged in the Plan period. Nearly eighty per cent of the equipment in the workshops and sheds needs to be replaced while a large proportion of the rolling stock has already out-lived its economic life. Nearly eighty per cent of the road transport fleet of State Road Transport Corporations, forty-seven per cent of the shipping tonnage and more than half of the inland water transport flotilla would come up for replacement in the course of the Seventh Plan. As for Civil Aviation, around thirty-three per cent of the aircraft would have outlived their codal life. The magnitude of the replacements is, however, such that it is not possible to fully rectify the position during the course of a single plan period. Hence a phased programme of replacements spread over two five year plan periods would be adopted for the purpose of planning transportation investments.
8.8 The massive scale of replacements, however, provides an opportunity for the introduction of new technologies and the much- desired modernisation of infrastructure. In fact, in several areas, upgrading goes hand in hand with replacements. Accordingly, replace- ments would be vigorously pursed in the Seventh Plan.
8.9 The transport infrastructure also suffers from want of adequate maintenance. Not only are the maintenance facilities inadequate in relation to needs, the problem is further compounded by inadequacy of funds. Thus on account of poor condition of roads, enormous avoidable costs, are incurred for instance, in the excessive use of diesel oil, and repair and maintenance of vehicles. As such, replacements and rehabilitation along with maintenance would be accorded priority over net additions to capacity as a more economic means of increasing the throughput of the system.
8.10 As in other areas, there is preponderance of outmoded technologies in the transport sector, both for locomotion and maintenance of assets. These technologies are wasteful, inefficient and can no longer be relied upon to cope with the growing transport demand. There is thus an urgent need for adoption of new technologies to raise the traffic volume and improve the traffic flows with lower unit cost of operation. Care should be exercised in the introduction of new technologies for the reasons that, capital assets have a long physical life.
8.11 In the transport sector energy has special significance not only because it is one of the major users of energy but also because different transport modes use different forms of energy with varying intensities and efficiencies. In the inter-modal allocation of traffic, this factor assumes added importance in the context of the energy constraints. Thus efforts would be made to develop rail capacity in view of its energy efficient character. Movement of commodities and passengers over short distance is generally more economical by road. Transport modes which are relatively more energy efficient but not developed so far, such as coastal shipping, ropeways, pipelines transportation as well as those dependent on animal energy would have to be utilised.
8.12 Measures also need to be taken to improve fuel efficiency of the diesel-based road transport system. This would necessitate improvements in vehicle design, introduction of truck-trailer combination, multi-axled vehicles, installation of speed control devices, improvements in the condition of roads, etc.
8.13 The Railways need to phase out steam locomotives as early as possible preferably not later than 2000 A.D. The pace of electrification on the railway network would be accelerated for conservation of liquid fuels and more efficient energy utilisation.
8.14 The public transport system requires to be expanded and strengthened, being much more energy efficient than personalised motor transport. Efforts would be made to introduce electricity-based mass transit systems in major cities.
8.15 Population growth and economic expansion would lead to a substantial build-up of transport demand in the years to come. There is, however, a limit to which simple expansion of the system would be able to meet future increases in traffic. Even such expansion would be constrained by resources. Accordingly, it will be necessary to minimise transport coefficients through interrelated policy measures involving inter alia greater dispersal of industries and balanced regional development. Other measures in this regard would include beneficiation of minerals and ores and pit-head thermal generation of electricity apart from increased emphasis on development of other energy sources, e.g. hydro and nuclear with little implications for transportation system. Integrated land use and transportation planning holds promise to reduce pressure on transport facilities. It is particularly important for small and medium size cities, which are still far from reaching levels of congestion and saturation of the metropolitan cities.
8.16 Transport planning involves systematic projection of traffic demand and its allocation on the basis of relative costs between different modes of transport. However, for this purpose data gaps happen to pose more difficult problems in the case of road transport and inland water transport than of rail, coastal shipping and air services. As
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regards the resource cost on transport services, hardly any studies are being undertaken on a continuous basis to make commodity and modewise estimates. This inhibits identification of least cost solutions to meet the specific transport requirements. In order to remove these shortcomings, it is proposed to set up an Inter- Disciplinary Group on Transport in the Planning Commission which will carry out systematic transport studies on a unified basis.
8.17 Though perhaps necessary in earlier stages of development, vertical integration within the transport sub-sector becomes uneconomic and inefficient in the long-run. For example, the policy followed by the Railways in respect of equipment production or Oil and Natural Gas Commission in acquiring and operating off-shore supply vessels as also other specialised crafts or helicopter services needs to be reoriented towards achieving greater specialisation in the services as well as production of equipment and other inputs. Such specialisation will yield substantial advantages of division of labour and also benefit certain transport organisations as for example, Indian shipping companies which have suffered due to the world wide recession. Likewise, Railways should concentrate increasingly on their main function of providing transport services rather than manufacture equipment and rolling stock for which adequate facilities are now available in the country.
8.18 Lack of multi-modalism is one of the weaknesses of our transport system. Containerisation provides excellent opportunity to improve transport linkages. Special emphasis would, therefore, be laid on the formulation of investment programmes for containerisation of inland transport. Inter-modal container freight stations would be set up at selected centres in the country. These freight stations will handle both inland and export cargo.
8.19 The major thrust for augmenting the transport capacity to meet the expected demand has to be on the basis of improved productivity of the existing facilities through technological improvements as well as improvement of management practices rather than build up of additional capacity. There is a substantial scope for improvements in the productivity of assets as well as manpower in respect of different modes of transport. In the Seventh Plan, the investment programmes would be designed to attain improved efficiency and productivity.
8.20 In view of huge costs entailed in the construction and maintenance of an efficient transport system, cooperation and coordination between the public and private sectors would be encouraged and improved wherever feasible and desirable. For the public sector investments, additional resources would also need to be generated by suitable pricing policies so that larger segments of the Plan are met through internal resources. To this end, commercial viability of different sub-sectors would be an important segment of policy formulation.
8.21 Keeping in view what has been stated above, important policy objectives in the Seventh Plan would be:-
(1) To replace the overaged assets in a phased manner and to ensure that in future arrears in this regard are not allowed to build up;
(2) To modernise the transport infrastructure on the basis of new technologies;
(3) To ensure that the existing capacity is effectively maintained, that such maintenance is provided for and that provisions so made are in fact used for the purpose;
(4) To maximise the utilisation of the existing assets through higher productivity to be achieved through technological improvements as also more efficient management and operation;
(5) To give priority to the completion of essential on- going works which add to the capacity of the system;
(6) To conserve energy, particularly, diesel to the maximum extent possible;
(7) To give special attention to improve accessibility to villages;
(8) To reduce transport effort by inter-related policy measures like dispersal of industries, balanced regional development and rational land use planning;
(9) To avoid sectoral mismatches and duplication through integrated planning of mineral, industrial, energy and transportation development.
(10) To promote multi-modal transport operation through introduction of container services etc;
(11) To have a cost based price structure and to improve the financial viability of the under-takings.
RAILWAYS 8.22 Indian Railways are the nation's largest single undertaking with a capital investment of around Rs. 9500 crores and a total staff strength of about 1.7 million. The route length of rail network exceeds 61,600 kilometres, including some 13,000 kilometers with multiple tracks. Broad gauge makes up 53 per cent of the total route kilometrage; metre gauge 40 per cent and narrow gauge accounting for the remaining 7 per cent. The broad gauge system handles 88.3 per cent of freight tonne kilometres and about 81.4 per cent of passenger kilometres, the corresponding share of metre gauge being 11.6 per cent and 17.9 per cent. The share of narrow gauge is minimal. As yet, 6440 route kilometres have been electrified, representing 20 per cent of broad gauge and 1 per cent of metre gauge route length. Rail routes have expanded by 8065 kilometres since 1950-51, while 3,065 kilometres were converted from MG to BG. As on March 1984, the motive power fleet consisted to 2805 diesel, 1194 electric
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and 6212 steam locomotives. The coaching stock included 52 diesel rail cars, about 2850 electric multiple units and about 27,300 coaches. The freight rolling stock comprised of 3,75,000 units or 5,28,000 in terms of 4-wheelers. Over the years, the proportion of bogie wagons fitted with centre buffer couplers and higher pay loads has been increased with a view to improving the carrying capacity of trains.
8.23 Steam traction was the principal mode of locomotion until 1953. Since then it is being progressively displaced by diesel and electric traction primarily for haulage of freight traffic. Electric traction now accounts for 30 per cent of the total gross tonne kilometres of freight traffic with the share of diesel traction being around 65 per cent. As regards passenger traffic, steam traction still accounts for a significant share, 27 per cent on BG and 63 per cent on MG.
8.24 There are 46 maintenance workshops set up in the latter half of 19th and early 20th century. The equipment, including machines tools, in these workshops is by and large overdue for replacement.
Review 8.25 In the period since inception of planning, freight traffic has increased at an average annual rate of 3.1 per cent in terms of originating tonnage, and at a some what faster rate of 4.3 per cent in terms of tonne kilometres due to increase in average length of haulage. These long term averages, however, do not give an idea of the changing trends since the early 1970s. Freight traffic grew by 1.1 per cent (originating tonnes) and 2.3 per cent (tonne kilometres) over the 10 years ending in 1980. In the Sixth Plan, however, growth at 3.95 per cent (tonnes) and 3.0 per cent (tonne kilometres) picked up again, with the total originating tonnage increasing from 217.8 million tonnes to 264.4 million tonnes.
8.26 The average lead of traffic has gradually increased over time from 470 Kms. in 1950-51 to 690 Kms. in 1984-85, peaking at 720 kilometres in 1980-81. The freight traffic carried by the Railways during the selected years since 1950-51 is presented in Table 8.2.
8.27 Seven bulk commodities (coal, steel & steel materials, iron ore for export, foodgrains, petroleum products, cement and fertilizers) made up about 80 per cent of the total originating traffic and 75 per cent of total tonne kilometrage in 1984-85. The changing structure of freight traffic since 1960-61 can be judged from the data set out in Table 8.3
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8.28 It will be seen that over the years, the volume and share of coal in the total traffic carried by the Railways has been increasing mostly at the expense of general goods traffic.
8.29 Over time, the growth of passenger traffic, too, has been accoumpanied by significant shift in its composition. Data relating to passenger traffic, both non-subsurban and suburban, during the selected years is presented in Table 8.4
8.30 Since 1950-51 non-suburban passenger traffic increased by 1.6 per cent per annum (passengers) and 3.4 per cent (passengers kilometres). The corresponding annual growth rates in the seventies were 3.1 per cent and 5.9 per cent. In the Sixth Plan, however, the position reversed, when an average annual decline of 1.6 per cent (passengers) was recorded. But, traffic in terms of passenger kilometres continued to increase though at a somewhat slow rate of 2.9 per cent. Yet, characteristically, long distance travel by fast mail and express trains on the broad gauge continued to record by far the most rapid growth. The metre gauge, segment of the network continued to lose traffic, on an average by 3.7 per cent annually primarily due to conversion of sections from metre to broad gauge.