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3 people in Madhya Pradesh, India, died while stuck in a THIRTY TWO hour traffic jam along an intercity highway.
(www.bhaskarenglish.in)
this post was submitted on 29 Jun 2025
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That's mostly my doing. I live here, and I have to bear witness to my people becoming more and more carbrained by the day as the government bends over backwards to cater to corporations and rich people with fancy cars at the expense of the gigantic majority who rely on public transit, bicycles, or just walking to get to where they need to go. I hate it.
Given the size, wealth, and density of India, I expected the list of underway and upcoming train projects to be much longer and ambitious. Of course, the hyperloop project is... special.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_rail_transport_in_India
I also expected there to be more high speed rail going on. There's at least one actual HSR route being constructed, but a very long list of "maybe nots" built up. Once the single route goes into service, India will have 300km more HSR than the US does (which is zero):
https://themetrorailguy.com/high-speed-rail-projects-in-india/
The current government isn't focusing on the trains ordinary people need (local trains with lots of unreserved compartments), because these are subsidized and run at a loss. They are running IR like a private company, trying to build vanity projects and put out more luxury trains with surge pricing so they can make money. Also replacing historic stations with crimes against architecture.
Mamata Banerjee ran the rail ministry for five years without raising the ticket price by one rupee, and she's, well, Mamata Banerjee. How come the current geniuses can't do this?
We happen to have a public-sector-only rail system, with low ticket prices on most trains. I don't know how much it costs to keep the majority of routes, subsidized as they are. Maybe the vanity projects with high-ticket prices will help with that. I believe the bigger expenditure perennially has been on personnel, as IR has lakhs of employees. That can't be wished away.
Passenger transport is subsidized by goods transport. And the more expensive classes aren't as subsidized.
But previous ministers didn't need to do all that! And most Vande Bharaths or whatever run with empty seats, while general compartments on normal trains are overcrowded. So there is a misallocation of resources.
I don't know if they are correctly allotting staff to various roles. After one recent accident, it was found that the safety section was understaffed. But in any case, staff can be reassigned, while an unnecessary infrastructure project cannot later be repurposed to do something necessary.
All good points. I mentioned their lakhs of employees, because that bill keeps rising and probably faster than income. It is the public sector - they will waste money on unnecessary things - but they need to keep up with the personnel bill additionally. That combination means they need to generate money from somewhere.
I think government funding patterns have changed, and ministries have been looking to generate funds rather than be funded by the exchequer. Think BSNL, NHAI. So too IR?