Highlights of the Railway Budget 2014-15

New Delhi: Railways Minister DV Sadananda Gowda on Tuesday presented the Narendra Modi government's first Rail Budget in the Lok Sabha.

Here are the highlights of the Railway Budget 2014-15:

- No new increase in passenger fares and freight charges

- Bullet train on Mumbai-Ahmedabad Sector

- Diamond quadrilateral for high speed trains

- Plan to hike speed of trains to 160-200 km/hr in 9 sectors

- Online booking to support 7,200 tickets/minute; to allow 1.2 lakh users log in simultaneously

- Reservation system to be revamped, ticket-booking through mobile phones, post offices to be popularized

- Online platform, unreserved tickets

- Combo parking-platform tickets at stations

- Women RPF Constables to escort ladies coaches; 4,000 women constables to be inducted

- Retiring room facility to be extended to all stations

- Battery operated cars for differently abled and senior citizens at major stations

- Feedback services through IVRS on quality of food

- Food can be ordered through SMS, phone; Food courts at major stations

- Cleanliness budget up by 40 pc over last year

- CCTVs to be used at stations for monitoring cleanliness

- Setting up of corpus fund for stations' upkeep; RO drinking water at stations and trains

- Automatic door closing in mainline and sub-urban coaches

- 58 new trains and extension of 11; 864 additional EMUs to be introduced in Mumbai over 2 years

- FDI in railway projects, except in operations.

- FDI, domestic investments in rail infrastructure

- Office-on-Wheels: Internet & Workstation facilities on select trains

- Wi-Fi in A-1, A category stations and in select trains

- Rail university for technical and non-technical subjects

- Some stations to be developed to international standards through PPP model

- Parcel traffic to be segregated to separate terminals to make passenger traffic unhindered

- Loss per passenger per kilometre up from 10p (in 2000-01) to 23p (2012-13)

- Solar energy to be tapped at major stations

- Highest ever plan outlay of Rs 65,455 crore for 2014-15

- Expenditure in 2014-15 pegged at Rs 149,176 crore.