Indian Railways has embarked on a journey of transformation. While the dedicated freight corridors (DFCs) aim to revolutionise the movement of goods, the high speed rail (HSR) networks will speed up passenger travel. A look at the progress on the development of these mega programmes undertaken by Indian Railways…
Dedicated freight corridors
The development of DFCs has been planned with the aim to enhance the railway’s capacity and capability to carry freight traffic and increase the modal share of the railways in the country’s total freight mix from the current 26 per cent to 45 per cent.
Of the two corridors under implementation, the eastern DFC (EDFC) has already been commissioned, while the western DFC (WDFC) will be completed in 2024.
Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited has been tasked with constructing a dedicated network of broad gauge railway lines exclusively for freight trains. Currently, two corridors spanning a total length of 2,843 km are being executed. The EDFC spans 1,337 km, stretching from Ludhiana in Punjab to Sonnagar in Bihar, while the WDFC is 1,506 km long, extending from Dadri in Uttar Pradesh to the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) in Mumbai. The focus of these corridors is on linking the Golden Quadrilateral route, which connects the four metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Howrah and its two diagonals (Delhi-Chennai and Mumbai-Howrah). This route is highly saturated and carries more than 52 per cent of the passenger traffic and 58 per cent of the revenue-earning freight traffic of Indian Railways.
Engineered differently from the existing tracks, DFCs can handle longer and heavier trains. The average speed of these trains is around 65 km per hour, powered by 2×25 kV electric traction and equipped with automatic signalling with 2 km spacing in automatic territory.
The EDFC, excluding the Sonnagar-Andal section, is complete and has been fully operational since November 1, 2023. The Sonnagar-Andal section, which was originally planned to be developed on public-private partnership (PPP) mode, was abandoned and has now been taken over by the Ministry of Railways to be developed in engineering, procurement and construction mode for both passenger and freight traffic. Meanwhile, for the WDFC, construction work on 1,220 km out of the total 1,506 km has been completed. The project has achieved financial progress of 92 per cent. Work on the Palanpur-Makarpura and Sachin-Vaitarna sections is expected to be completed by March 2024 and the Vaitarna-JNPT section is to be completed thereafter, by December 2024.
In 2023-24, a total of 55,079 trains ran on the EDFC and WDFC, hauling over 70,285 million gross tonne km and 38,555 million net tonne km of freight, demonstrating is an increase of 192.1 per cent and 213.22 per cent, respectively, compared to the previous year.
The quick and reliable transportation offered by the DFCs is particularly beneficial for critical sectors such as power and heavy manufacturing in the northern and eastern states of the country. The operationalisation of the EDFC has reduced the time it takes to transport coal from eastern India to power plants in northern India by 30-40 per cent. This has led to fewer blackouts due to coal shortages and reduced inventory costs for power plants.
Over the longer run, the DFCs will enable the country to reduce its high logistics cost from 13 to 15 per cent of the GDP to a more sustainable 8 per cent by 2030. They will also reduce dependence on transporting freightthrough highways. Each km-long train on the EDFC is likely to replace about 72 freight trucks on roads. This, in turn, will reduce fossil fuel consumption and decrease the country’s carbon footprint. Additionally, the DFCs will see the development of multimodal logistics parks at select locations.
New corridors that have been proposed include the East-Coast Corridor spanning 1,080 km from Kharagpur to Vijayawada in West Bengal, Odisha and Andhra Pradesh; the 1,738 km East-West Corridor from Bhusaval to Dankuni traversing West Bengal, Jharkhand, Odisha, Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra; and the 890 km North-South Corridor Itarsi-Nagpur-Vijayawada route acrosd Madhya Pradesh, Maharashtra, Telangana and Andhra Pradesh. Detailed project reports (DPRs) for these projects are currently being prepared.
High-speed rail
Indian Railways has started developing HSR corridors to transform the railway network. HSR holds significant potential for India’s economic, social and financial development. Currently, the country’s first HSR Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor is under development. It aims to provide high speed connectivity between two key financial hubs in Maharashtra and Gujarat. The project spans 508 km. This comprises 465 km of viaducts, 10 km of bridges, 26 km of tunnels (including a 7 km long undersea tunnel) and 7 km of embankments. The route will traverse across 12 stations – eight in Gujarat (Vapi, Bilimora, Surat, Bharuch, Vadodara, Anand, Ahmedabad and Sabarmati) and four in Maharashtra (Mumbai, Thane, Virar and Boisar). The trains will have an operational speed of 320 km per hour and the entire journey can be completed in about 2.07 hours, with limited stops at Surat, Vadodara and Ahmedabad.
National High-Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) is executing the project with technical and funding support from the Japanese government. The Japanese government is providing 81 per cent of the project cost as a soft loan with a low interest rate of 0.1 per cent and a moratorium of 15 years, for a period of 50 years. The remaining cost is being funded by the Indian government. Most recently, in January 2024, the government has signed a loan agreement with Japan International Cooperation Agency for an official development assistance of Rs 226.27 billion for the project.
So far, physical progress of 39.85 per cent has been achieved on the project. Further, 290.64 km of pier foundation work, 267.48 km of pier construction, 150.97 km of girder casting and 119 km of girder launching have been completed. All civil contracts have been awarded and land acquisition, totalling 1,389.49 hectares across Gujarat, Maharashtra, and Dadra & Nagar Haveli, has also been successfully completed.
Recently, NHSRCL announced that it has completed nearly 15 per cent of the civil work for the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) station, a key component of the corridor. NHSRCL is aiming for the station’s overall completion by 2027. The BKC station, slated to be the sole underground station, is designed with six platforms specifically tailored to suit 16-coach bullet trains.
Trials for the 50 km Bilimora Surat section in Gujarat are expected to commence in August 2026, with speeds reaching 350 km per hour, while the operational speed will be 320 km per hour. The entire project is expected to be completed by August 2027.
The project will use Shinkansen Technology, with Japan facilitating the technology transfer. It is one of the best global HSR technologies with one of the highest safety levels in the world. There have been zero passenger fatalities since the launch of the first Shinkansen train in Japan in 1964. Other technologies such as LiDAR and static refraction topography, aerodynamically designed HSR trains with advanced signalling and communication, and continuous automatic train control systems will also be deployed.
Going forward, the MoR has also tasked NHSRCL with preparing DPRs for seven HSR corridors. Four DPRs, including those for the Delhi-Varanasi HSR, Delhi-Ahmedabad HSR, Nagpur-Mumbai HSR and Mumbai-Hyderabad HSR corridors, have been submitted. The remaining three DPRs for the Delhi-Amritsar HSR, Chennai-Bengaluru-Mysore HSR and Varanasi-Howrah HSR corridors are expected to be finalised and submitted during 2024-25.