Will New Railway Economic Corridors Bolster Logistics And Passenger Services?

However, experts say that these announcements which were made in the interim budget without much details will need a herculean effort to be translated into reality.

Besides the highest-ever budgetary allocation of Rs 2.5 lakh crore for the Railways, the Finance Minister said that three corridors, including a corridor for energy, mineral, and cement, another to enhance port connectivity, and a third to decongest the high-traffic density corridors will be set up.

Three Economic Corridors To Boost Logistics Efficiency

Railway Ministry officials said that all the railway zones and concerned industry stakeholders have been working for the last two years to identify high-density routes and feasible industry-specific economic corridors.

“The dynamics of rail transport and experience from other developed countries show that dedicated corridors are not as productive as a multi-model approach. Hence, it was decided that these economic corridors would also cater to the passengers’ travel needs, enhancing the overall rail transportation network holistically,” a senior railway official, who did not wish to be named said.

Railway Minister Vaishnaw, in a press briefing earlier this month, clarified that the economic corridors will not be on the lines of dedicated freight corridors where only freight trains will run.

The thinking behind having these three corridors is to first look at the various origins and destinations of trains along with the existing network to identify the capacity gap and fill that gap by increasing services of trains, number of tracks etc.

Officials, associated with the infrastructure development project, said that tripling and quadrupling work have already started on routes Golden Quadrilateral routes and its diagonal.

“The Railway Ministry has already made a blueprint focusing on Golden Quadrilateral routes under which links Delhi with Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata and the two diagonals - Mumbai-Chennai and Mumbai-Kolkata,” officials said.

According to data, presented by the Ministry, the total length of the route among four metro cities and its two diagonals is over 10,100 km. This is 16 per cent of the total length of the existing track network, which is about 65,000 km. However, these routes register 52 per cent of the total traffic carried by India Railway. Similarly, these routes also handle 58 per cent of the total railway freight.

“The plan is to lay additional pairs of railway tracks along with the existing two pairs on these busiest routes. For instance, there is a huge flow of traffic from Maharashtra, Gujarat and Delhi to Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal and vice versa. So a pair of dedicated tracks will not only take care of occasional and regular passenger rush but will provide seamless connectivity to mineral-rich states and industrial towns,” he added.

Experts say that this will also take care of track maintenance, which is a major reason for the loss of punctuality of trains. They say that at present since there are only two pairs of tracks for up and down directions on many busy routes, trains are cancelled and or held back for hours for a minor fault in the track.

“If you have an additional infrastructure parallel to the existing one, then whether it is maintenance or any untoward situation, the flow of traffic will remain consistent,” the officer said, adding that the average speed of trains has suffered a lot in 2023 because of huge redevelopment and remodelling of railway yards in several places.

Over a while, the Railways has also enhanced its daily track laying capacity from 4 km per day to 15 km per day. Annual coach manufacturing capacity has been improved to 5500 coaches per year, which can create 1000 to 1100 trains every year. At present, the Railway is running about 12,000 passenger trains with 65,000 coaches.

“With this capacity enhancement, there is no challenge in fulfilling the passengers' travel requirements in the coming four to five years. Freight operations will also benefit in a big way from the network expansion,” the officer said.

Besides, the Indian Railway has officially stated that it is working on the possibility of starting a high-speed rail project like the Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project on these Golden Quadrilateral routes.

Port Connectivity Will Be A Game-Changer

At present, out of a total of 28 major ports at different locations, the Jawahar Lal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) is the only one that is in the process of getting direct connectivity with the industrial towns through the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor.

Sources in the Ministry say that after JNPT, a feasibility report is being prepared to connect at least five to ten major ports to the country’s industrial hubs to boost logistics for the import and export of several products.

A section of experts is of the view that economic corridors are vital for enhancing logistics efficiency and connecting ports to industrial hubs and commercial centres, will spur economic growth.

They say that the benefits of two dedicated freight corridors – Eastern and Western – have already started yielding huge benefits despite the fact that they are not fully operational.

“It takes just 12 hours to supply dairy products from Palanpur in Gujarat to Dadri in Uttar Pradesh from the Western Freight Corridors, which is currently operational on a 938 km route between Dadri and Sanand (North),” J K Agarwal, a senior officer from WDFC said in a media exchange recently.

He added, “We started a truck-on-train service in July last year in which 25 trucks full of dairy products are loaded on rakes. We provide a separate coach from truck drivers. They are offloaded in Dadri and from there these trucks are driven to their respective destinations.”

WDFC officials say that this has reduced the travel time by 50 to 70 per cent as this has been the first time in the history of the Indian Railway that freight trains are running as fast as the Rajdhani and Vande Bharat Express.

According to them, this corridor will be extended to Jawahar Lal Nehru Port Trust by the end of this year, providing the first-ever direct port connectivity.

Some Feel Real Issues Are Still Not Addressed

However, many experts and officials associated with train operations are extremely dissatisfied with the Budgetary announcements as they say that it hasn’t addressed the real issues of train passengers.

They say that a train passenger is concerned with a confirmed ticket, punctual train service, hygienic food and clean coach and washrooms, which hasn’t been addressed by this government in the past ten years.

“New trains have been launched, resulting in congestion on the rail track because laying down of tracks fell short of in proportionate to new trains launched. This has severely impacted punctuality,” M. Raghavaiah, General Secretary of the National Federation of Indian Railwaymen (NFIR) said.

He added that the government is not focusing on the core issues of addressing the shortage of skilled and specialized human resources.

“As the Indian Railways has been almost electrified, we need specialised human resources for asset management and the Railway Ministry wrote to the Centre for new post creation but the government hasn’t done anything yet. This is not good for the safety of train operations as well as asset maintenance,” Raghavaiah said.

He added, “The Ministry is wasting money on station development to benefit contractors. We don’t need an airport like a railway station but more tracks and punctual and safe train service etc.”