Indian Railways to roll out 17,000 non-AC coaches over next 5 years: Ashwini Vaishnaw
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The Indian Railways is set to manufacture approximately 17,000 general and non-air-conditioned coaches over the next five years to cater to the high demand from lower-income passengers, Union Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw informed the Lok Sabha on Wednesday.Speaking in the lower house, Vaishnaw noted that the number of general class coaches has substantially increased in recent years. He said, 'these coaches, along with other non-AC variants, constitute about 70 per cent of the Railways' total fleet of 82,000 coaches. In terms of capacity, they offer nearly 78 per cent of the 69 lakh seats available across the network daily.'The focus on non-AC travel comes as passenger numbers in unreserved coaches grew to 651 crore in FY25, up from 609 crore the previous fiscal.To meet this demand, the Railways has already introduced the fully non-AC Amrit Bharat trains , with a production plan for 100 such trains currently underway.The minister also provided updates on other key railway initiatives:Vande Bharat Express: 144 Vande Bharat train services are now operational nationwide. The semi-high-speed trains continue to see high demand, with an overall occupancy rate of 105.03 per cent so far in the current fiscal year (2025-26). Kavach Safety System : The indigenous Automatic Train Protection (ATP) technology, 'Kavach,' has been deployed on 1,548 Route Kilometres (RKm). Work is also in progress on the critical Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah corridors (approximately 3,000 RKm), with track-side works completed on about 2,200 RKm as of July-end.Overall, the Indian Railways operated an average of 13,940 passenger trains every day in 2024-25, marking an increase from the 13,169 daily trains run in 2019-20, the Railways Ministry stated.
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