In April 2005, India and Japan announced a collaboration for feasibility and possible funding of the dedicated rail freight corridors.
RITES entrusted with the feasibility study of both eastern and western passages, followed by the Planning Commission’s Task Force to plan a concept paper on Delhi-Mumbai (Western) and Delhi-Howrah (Eastern) dedicated freight corridor projects and to suggest a new organizational structure for financing, planning, operation and construction of these corridors.
In 2006, RITES submitted the Feasibility Study Report of those corridors, and the Cabinet approved Task Force’s report. Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) and supported the Feasibility Study report. Meanwhile, RITES submitted the PETS Report based on which the project was approved at the cost of Rs.28,181crore.
Indian Railways’ Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) Project is a real game-changer in the country’s economic development. The Dedicated Freight Corridor Project involves two freight corridors- 1506 Route km long Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC) and 1875 Route km long Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC).
The national transporter is currently conducting trial runs of trains with trucks between the New Rewari station in Haryana and the DFC New Palanpur station in Gujarat.
According to Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL), the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor will start from Sahnewal, located near Ludhiana in Punjab will pass via Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Haryana, Bihar and Jharkhand before terminating at Dankuni in West Bengal.
The Western Dedicated Freight Corridor will provide connectivity from Dadri in the state of Uttar Pradesh to Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JNPT) in the city of Mumbai Maharashtra. It will traverse through Uttar Pradesh, Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and Gujarat. Some of the main objectives of Indian Railways’ Dedicated Freight Corridor Project:
- Minimizing the logistic cost of transportation
- To facilitate the operations of longer (1.5 km) as well as double-stack container trains
- Decongestion of the existing Indian Railways network
- To increase the average speed of freight trains from a current speed of 25 km per hour to a rate of 70 km per hour
- Energy-efficient as well as an eco-friendly rail transport system
- Running Heavy Haul trains as well as the overall burden of 13,000 Tonne
- Linking made within the existing ports and industrial areas for faster movement of freight
- To increase the share of rail from existing 30 per cent to 45 per cent
Under India’s Eleventh Five Year Plan (2007–12), the Ministry of Railways started constructing a new Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) in two long routes, namely the Eastern and Western freight corridors.
The two routes cover 3,260 kilometres (2,030 mi), with the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor stretching from Ludhiana in Punjab to Dankuni in West Bengal and the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor from Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai to Dadri in UP.
Upgrading transportation technology, increasing productivity, and reducing unit transportation costs are the project’s focus areas.
DFCCIL was designated by the government as a ‘special purpose vehicle’ and was created to undertake planning & development, mobilization of financial resources and construction, maintenance and operation of the Dedicated Freight Corridors. On 30th October 2006, DFCCIL was registered as a company under the Companies Act 1956.
Indian Railways is planning to convert 10,000 km of passenger and freight trunk routes into high-speed rail corridors over ten years with a total investment of Rs 20 lakh crore in 2019 and an annual investment of ₹2 lakh crore from 2017–2027, where half of the money will be used on converting existing routes into high-speed corridors by leap-frogging the technology and the rest of the money will be used to develop the stations and electronic signalling at the cost of ₹60 thousand crores to made the trains automated running at a frequency of 5–6 minutes.
The 3,300 km length of the freight corridors will also be completed, freeing the dual-use high demand trunk routes for running more high-speed passenger trains.
