State of Railway Infrastructure in London and India

          As Ashwin sir mentioned in the class about the railway infrastructure in London, I wanted to add some more to it from my personal experience. The operators of railways in London viz, National Rail, Greater Anglia, Underground, and others operate together. In the sense, the railway lines can be operated by more than one operator. And while travelling between two stations, say, from a suburb to some place inside the city, even if the passenger has to change trains of different operators, still he can buy only one ticket for the whole travel. This facility eases the travel procedure for the passenger. But to maintain this, there has to be a proper structuring of the fare, and other parameters. This kind of system ensures a higher standard of infrastructure, also due to the competition set up due to involving more than one operator. The application of this system in India might not be viable unless private operators are allowed to operate. In my point of view, this can be achieved, given proper regulation of fares (set by the private operator) is done by the government, because the raise in fares is a potential roadblock to let the private sector enter the railways.
          Also, one more new thing I learnt about the railways in London is that they have “community rail” where, local people and organizations work together with the railway operators to improve their local railway infrastructure. This kind of a system aims to improve the infrastructure and at the same time involve the community. The benefits of this system are also proved to be high. This again is a difficult thing to implement in India, but not impossible. Awareness can be created in the local people to develop the infrastructure by their own. For example, the current status of MRTS stations in Chennai is very bad. A person who is new to Chennai, gets out of the train, can’t really understand which way to go to reach his final destination. Setting up proper sign boards can be done and the funding can be done by the government by dedicating some share from the ticket price. Improving the existing infrastructure is as important as creating new infrastructure.