LEARNING FROM THE MISTAKES OF OTHERS:

India makes tracks for the train: The fast-growing country upgrades its rail services to meet travel demands, even as other infrastructure lags. (Nachammai Raman, 4/20/05, The Christian Science Monitor)

The country's strong growth rate and sheer size has many grouping it with China as this century's future superpowers. But India has so far not made the same massive infrastructure investments, especially in the area of transportation.

The one exception is the national railroad. The addition of 46 new passenger trains in this fiscal year's Indian Railways budget - including upgraded service to Bangalore - has raised eyebrows. Indian trains, however, are in business because road and air remains so underdeveloped. [...]

"Indian Railways always makes a profit. We have never gone into the red," boasts S. Gagarin, the railroad's senior division commercial manager in Bangalore. According to government estimates, the return on rail investments is nearly three times that of other transportation investments.

With 67,941 miles of tracks, 7,000 passenger trains, and 4,000 freight trains per day, as well as 6,853 stations, the 152-year-old train system is one of the largest in the world. Its workforce of 1.5 million also makes it India's single largest employer.

Uvais Ahmed is a frequent passenger on the increasingly important Madras-Bangalore route of the Shatabdi Express, to which an additional service was announced in the budget. Being a businessman, he finds the train schedule convenient. He boards the train in Madras in the morning, which gives him five working hours in Bangalore before he rides the train back. He's home the same night.

Although Mr. Ahmed owns a car, he doesn't drive to Bangalore unless he anticipates staying over for three or four days. And that's only to help him get around in Bangalore. "Trains are the cheapest and safest," he says. "Highways are not so safe."

"Indian Railways has the lowest accident rate at 0.6 per million kilometers," says Mr. Gagarin. This is a far cry from when the Indian railroad, infamous for head-on collisions and slips, served as a favorite Bollywood subterfuge to turn plots and dispense with characters. Now, it's road accidents that seem to capture Bollywood's imagination. Indian road accidents grievously injure an estimated 1.275 million per year and contribute to 10 percent of road accident fatalities worldwide, according to the Delhi-based Institute of Road Traffic Education.

Many travelers also choose the train for economy. On average, flights on the Madras-Bangalore sector cost four to 10 times as much as rail trips. "If you have less time, then you fly. Otherwise, you take the train to save money. We Indians like to save money," says Ahmed.