Three Dedicated Freight corridors (DFCs), namely East-West corridor, East Coast corridor and North-South corridor have been identified along with timelines.
Dedicated Freight and High-Speed Rail Corridors: To meet the future travel and logistic movement requirements, Piyush Goyal-led Indian Railways in its Draft National Rail Plan has focussed on three Dedicated Freight corridors and High speed corridors. According to the Railway Ministry, three Dedicated Freight corridors (DFCs), namely East-West corridor, East Coast corridor and North-South corridor have been identified along with timelines. For these DFCs, PETS survey are already underway. Apart from these DFCs, several new High Speed Rail Corridors have also been identified. At present, survey on Delhi-Varanasi High Speed Rail is already underway, the ministry stated.
In a bid to address the inadequacies of capacity constraints as well as improve its modal share in India’s total freight eco system, the national transporter has come up with Draft National Rail Plan. To plan infrastructural capacity enhancement along with strategies to increase Indian Railways’ modal share, a long term strategic plan called the National Rail Plan has been created. The National Rail Plan, according to the Railway Ministry, will be a common platform for all Indian Railways’ future business, infrastructural, as well as financial planning. The national transporter aims to finalize the Final plan by January 2021.
One of the main objectives of the National Rail Plan is to create capacity ahead of demand by the year 2030. This would cater to growth in demand up to the year 2050 as well as increase the national transporter’s modal share from 27 per cent currently to 45 per cent in freight by 2030 as part of a national commitment to minimize Carbon emission.
According to the Railway Ministry, Vision 2024 has been launched as part of the National Rail Plan, for accelerated implementation of certain critical projects by the year 2024 such as 100 per cent electrification, upgradation of speed to 160 km per hour on Delhi-Mumbai as well as Delhi-Howrah routes, multitracking of congested routes, upgradation of speed to 130 km per hour on all other Golden Quadrilateral and Golden Diagonal routes as well as the elimination of all Level Crossings on all Golden Quadrilateral and Golden Diagonal routes.
Source: Financial Express
