NEW DELHI: The government is likely to abandon the plan to set up three more dedicated freight corridors (DFCs) – East Coast, East-West and North-South – at an estimated combined cost of Rs 2 trillion. The Centre may instead opt for a few commodity-specific rail networks, a senior railway official told FE on condition of anonymity.
The move comes in the wake of the railways having to hard-sell the recently commissioned east and west freight corridors to potential bulk customers, and the issues that have cropped up of the network planning of these projects. The capacity utilisation of the two corridors remain low.
The rethink on the three additional DFCs is despite the fact that the Railway Board has recently received the detailed project reports for two or them (East Coast and North-South), and the DPR on the third one – East-West – is expected anytime soon.
According to the source, members of the railways board and the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation (DFCCL) have already met once to discuss DPRs.
“The reports for new DFCs have been submitted to the rail ministry for further approvals, but it is likely that the railways will not pursue the proposed corridors. Instead, the focus will be on building commodity-based corridors as announced by the finance minister,” said the official.
In her interim Budget speech, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had announced major railway corridor projects. These are exclusive corridors for specific commodities – energy, mineral and cement – and for specific purposes like port connectivity, and high-traffic density.
“The projects have been identified under the PM Gati Shakti for enabling multi-modal connectivity. Together with DFCs, these three economic corridor programmes will accelerate our GDP growth and reduce logistic costs,” Sitharaman had said recently.
The announcement in the last Budget was, however, seen as a deviation by the Narendra Modi government’s previous plan in this regard. In her Budget 2021-22 speech, Sitharaman had announced generic East Coast, East-West and North-South corridors.
If implemented, these three proposed corridors would have a combined length of 4,315 kms. As per DPRs, the 1,078-km East Coast corridor will connect Kharagpur to Vijaywada, and 931-km North-South corridor will connect Itarasi to Vijaywada.
The third East-West corridor is divided into two sub-corridors: 2,106-km Palghar to Dankuni section and 200-km Rajkharswan to Andal section. The proposed corridors aim to slash the transit time of freight trains, bring down the overall logistics costs, and further enhance the railways’ share in the total cargo movement.
“The commodity-specific corridors make more sense because there will be existing customers for them. The DFCCIL has been hard selling the eastern and western dedicated freight corridors.. there are issues with the network planning of these projects,” said the official.
The capacity utilisation levels of the 1,337-km EDFC and 1,506-km WDFC remain fairly low. For instance, the fully-completed EDFC has a capacity to run 120 trains each way per day but due to low demand, just about 75-80 trains are being operated at the moment. EDFC connects power plants in the northern states of UP, Delhi, Haryana, Punjab and parts of Rajasthan with Eastern coal fields. Traffic on EDFC also comprises finished steel, food grains, cement, fertilisers and limestone.
WDFC, which still has a 109-km stretch under construction, is running just 40-45 trains per day (each way) against the capacity of 120 trains. This stretch is used primarily for export-import container traffic and transporting milk from Gujarat to northern India.
Source: The Financial Express
