British-era stations count as historic too! CST, Chennai Central, etc. These are usually well-designed stone buildings that can last centuries. Instead we demolish them and build glass and steel monstrosities that start leaking and cracking within a year.

I don't know how much it costs to keep the majority of routes, subsidized as they are.

Passenger transport is subsidized by goods transport. And the more expensive classes aren't as subsidized.

Maybe the vanity projects with high-ticket prices will help with that.

But previous ministers didn't need to do all that! And most Vande Bharaths or whatever run with empty seats, while general compartments on normal trains are overcrowded. So there is a misallocation of resources.

I believe the bigger expenditure perennially has been on personnel

I don't know if they are correctly allotting staff to various roles. After one recent accident, it was found that the safety section was understaffed. But in any case, staff can be reassigned, while an unnecessary infrastructure project cannot later be repurposed to do something necessary.

Not metro; local passenger / suburban trains. The pnes with five and ten rupee tickets.