With dedicated freight corridors to be completed within the next few years, India will be able to launch passenger and freight trains on demand on some of its busiest lines, Railway Board chairman VK Yadav said.
Yadav said that, initially, trains on demand will be launched on Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah routes, as work on the north-south (Delhi-Chennai), east-west (Mumbai-Howrah) and Kharagpur-Vijayawada dedicated freight corridors is expected to be completed by 2021.
Asked by reporters how dedicated freight corridors will help railways to start passenger trains on demand, Yadav said that once the corridors are complete, freight trains on the existing lines will be shifted and passenger trains will be able to run with increased speed.
Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation (DFC) is building the eastern and western corridors. The Western Dedicated Freight Corridor connects Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai to Dadri in Uttar Pradesh, while the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor stretches from Ludhiana in Punjab to Dankuni in West Bengal, covering a distance of 3,360 kilometres.
Once both the corridors are completed, existing traffic on these routes will be diverted. For upgrading the existing network, Indian Railways has already sanctioned routes to be upgraded to 160 kph speed, an increase from current speeds of between 80 kph to 120 kph.
In January 2018, the central government approved four new dedicated freight corridors under the Golden Quadrilateral Freight Corridor (GQFC), including a 2,000 km East-West Dedicated Freight Corridor from Kolkata to Mumbai; the 890 km South-West Dedicated Freight Corridor, from Chennai to Goa, and the routes outlined above.
If the initial two corridors are opened in the coming years, Indian Railways will run freight and passenger trains on-demand to meet traffic requirements, without waiting, Yadav underlined.
Yadav also said that final location surveys on the Delhi-Chennai, Mumbai-Howrah and Kharagpur-Vijaywada dedicated freight corridors are underway and that they will be completed in the next year.
Once commissioned, the combined length of the four new DFCs will be around 6,000 km, providing ample capacity to run trains. Until that time, Indian Railways will have enough capacity to introduce private operators and corporatize production units, so that technologically advanced coaches that are fit to run 160 kph will be manufactured in the country itself, Yadav said.
Apart from this, Indian Railways has plans to convert 10,000 km passenger and freight trunk routes into high-speed rail corridors over 10 years with a total investment of US$300 billion. It has been investing US$30 billion a year since 2017 under its 10-year plan through 2027.
By Jagdish Kumar
India Correspondent | Mumbai
