How the competition sees the rail budget

RAILWAY BUDGET 2005-06

Vineet Agarwal
Executive Director, TCI

Over the years, road transportation has grown phenomenally, while the railways have been relegated as a carrier for the government

The current Budget is progressive, but the reduction in freight rates for LPG and kerosene is a populist measure. Freight pricing should be market-determined

The proposal to disband the monopoly of Concor and allow private players in transportation by rail opens new avenues for offering integrated solutions

GR Gopinath
MD, AIR DECCAN

The trend in this year's Railway Budget indicates that air travel will very soon become much cheaper than AC II rail travel on the long haul routes, including some key sectors

We have already seen passengers migrating to air from rail and road as it happened in the West. The only way Lalu Prasad could have prevented this was by dropping fares on first class and AC II and also by introducing faster trains on some of the key routes