When British left
India way back in 1947, they were quite confident that the Indians wouldn’t be
able to tackle the challenges of running a democracy and would soon reach out
to them to take over the country, well that day hasn’t really come, nor it’ll
ever come.
Indians have really
put on their sweat and blood in building this country. Fast-forward in 2021,
we’re one of the leading economies, IT hub, Phama giant, etc. In the last
decade or two, India has really shown to the world its modern day
infrastructure capabilities. From Statue of Unity to Chenab Bridge, India has
really caught the world’s eye.
A Modern Day Marvel
Dedicated Freight
Corridor or the DFC is the largest infra project of the Independent India. In
the current scenario, it is expected that the total cost incurred would be over
massive $12 billion, that’s more than the defense budget of Pakistan.
Numbers always
impress the world, but moreover, it’s the necessity that compelled the
administration to look into something like that. Indian railways share of
transportation was around 85% in 1950-51. Due to scarcity of proper planning
and no specified routes for freight, it is down to roughly 30%.
Why Do We Need It?
After Independence, the govt. focused on increasing the size of railways network in India by laying down new tracks and doubling the existing one. Decades of effort paid off, today we’re the 4th largest railway network in the world. That may look impressive, but huge rail network came with lots of challenges for the national transporter.
Going back at
Pre-Covid era, somewhere in 2019, Indian railways carried on an average 25
million passengers daily, on yearly basis, that would be closed to 8 billion
readership and millions of tons of freight.
For the last few
decades, with growing population, the govt. connecting rural parts of the
country with railways, adding new trains did help the commuters, but the
existing tracks were the same which was used for transporting logistics. That
is a herculean task.
The average speed
of freight trains in India is as low as 24 KMPH. In simple terms, a VIP
passenger train between Mumbai and New Delhi would take an average of 16-18
hours to reach its destination, while on the other hand, the freight or the
goods trains would take from a week to 10 days to cover the same distance.
Logistics is the
backbone of any economy, and for a third world country like us, where it’s
extremely important, and the delay in delivery of goods made things tough.
A freight train
would leave for a destination would be facing massive delays on the ways, as
they don’t follow a particular time table as the express trains. As they would
be stopped over hundreds of times during the journey with no anticipation of
how long will it really take to reach the destination?
What Exactly It Is?
In simple terms, the DFC could be defined as a specialized route entirely for freight. A specialized rail track of up and down routes is in the process of being laid which would run parallel to the existing tracks of Indian railways.
Once concluded, all
the freight trains would be shifted from the existing one to the newly laid
ones.
It will directly bring
down the pressure and traffic on existing network by almost 65% and bring down
the cost of logistics by 60%. Politicians and government in the past have cared
a little about the mismanagement and poor planning which has been going on for
years.
In every rail
budget, all they did was kept announcing new trains on the existing network
which was already overburdened by the traffic. They did announce doubling and
tripling of existing tracks where it was necessary every year, but paid little
attention to whether any on-ground progress was made or not.
Due to heavy
traffic, railways tracks on most of the routes across country required heavy
maintenance, which despite its importance could never be looked into. Since, it
was difficult to impose traffic blocks and administer maintenance activities.
Due to which the
speed of the trains were very limited and always remained prone to accidents.
Better late than never, in the past decade and half, the govt. did take this
project on a very serious note and carried out construction activities on war
footing.
Currently two DFCs,
the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor known as EDFC which would run from
Ludhiana in Punjab to Dankuni near Kolkata, while Western Dedicated Freight
Corridor (WDFC) would be commencing from Dadri near Ghaziabad to JNPT near
Mumbai, covering almost entire trunk routes.
With a comprised
length of 3300 kms, it’s first of its kind in India. The freight trains would
be running as per a pre-determined time table. That means any freight train
from Delhi to a port in Gujarat would reach within a day. What makes it further
special is the dynamics at which it would function.
Generally, a
freight train in India runs a length of 800 meters, give or add a hundred more meters,
since the loop tracks at most railways station and yards are not longer than
that, which would hamper overtakes by other trains when it’s needed.
Since, DFCs does
not go through conventional railways stations, it runs parallel to it, while it
bypasses all main cities, it does eliminate that problem to such large extent.
While trains which are operational on existing commissioned sections of DFCs
are as long as 2-3 kms in length, pulled up by multiple locomotives.
The operations are more interesting in WDFC where the above catenary wires of OHE are kept higher from usual which facilitates the operation of double stack container trains.
A
recent DFC tunnel was inaugurated near Sohna in Haryana, which would facilitate
a double line for double stack containers, first of its kind in the world built
in a record time of 1 year.
The capacity of a
freight trains directly increases by almost 300% while the time taken to
transfer goods would be bought down to almost 1/7th of the existing
duration.
It is sure to be
the game changer of Indian economy, with almost 50% of existing DFC network
commissioned and to be fully commissioned by Dec-2022, there are three more DFCs
in pipeline, which would be operational by 2030.
Things are just
looking good for the Indian sectors from here on, in terms of investment,
logistics, cost, cutting down carbon footprint, etc. We’ve never failed to
amaze the world, it’s high time that everyone takes cognizance of what we have
to offer to the world.
Edited by – Adrija Saha
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