Dedicated freight corridors in India

The dedicated freight corridors in India are a network of electric broad gauge freight railway lines that solely serve freight trains, thus making the freight service in India faster and efficient. The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) is responsible for undertaking planning, development, mobilisation of financial resources and construction, maintenance and operation of these corridors.

History


The Tenth Five Year Plan (2002–07) projected that freight traffic in India would rise from 489 million tons in 2001-02 to 624 million tons by 2006-07, growing at a rate of 5% annually. The mid-term appraisal of the Tenth Five Year Plan suggested building dedicated freight corridors (DFC) on trunk routes. The objective of the DFC was to separate freight traffic from passenger traffic on high density routes in order to improve operational efficiency, reduce cost of operation and carry higher volumes of freight traffic.

In April 2005, the government proposed building DFCs along the Golden Quadrilateral. The Committee on Infrastructure established a task force in May 2005 to prepare a concept paper on the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC) and the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC). The Ministry of Railways appointed RITES in July 2005 to conduct a feasibility and preliminary engineering cum traffic survey for both corridors. The Government also sought support from Japan for technical cooperation to assist in assessing the feasibility of the DFCs. Japan agreed to conduct a feasibility study on the project in November 2005.

RITES submitted its feasibility report on the project in January 2006. The Union Cabinet granted in-principle approval to the project the next month. The Dedicated Freight Corridors Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL), a public sector company to build and operate the DFCs, was incorporated on 30 October 2006. RITES submitted the preliminary engineering cum traffic survey for the project in January 2007. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) completed a feasibility study on the project in October 2007, and subsequently agreed to provide funding for the WDFC. The Ministry of Railways approached the World Bank to provide funding for the EDFC in 2008. In May 2011, the World Bank agreed to provide funds for a 1,183 km section of the EDFC connecting Ludhiana with Mughalsarai. The Union Cabinet approved both corridors in February 2008 with a target completion date of 2013.

Construction


Under the Eleventh Five Year Plan of India (2007–12), the Ministry of Railways started constructing a new Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) in two long routes, namely the Eastern and Western freight corridors. The two routes cover a total length of 3260 km, with the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor stretching from Ludhiana in Punjab to Dankuni in West Bengal and the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor from Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai (Maharashtra) to Dadri in Uttar Pradesh. Upgrading of transportation technology, increase in productivity and reduction in unit transportation cost are the focus areas for the project.

The construction of Eastern Freight Corridor has been completed by February 2024.

As of April 2024, Eastern Freight Corridor is fully operational whereas Western Freight Corridor has 85% operational status. Overall 90% of the network is operational. 300 trains run on the lines every day. The operational rate shall reach 95% by April-end.

The Detailed Project Review (DPR) of North-South and East-Coast Freight Corridor are being prepared has been submitted whereas the DPR for East-West DFC will be submitted by April-end (2024). The combined project value is ecpected to be Rs. 2 lakh crore.

Pantographs


In 2007, India set a world record with the indigenously designed pantograph, developed for the use in dedicated freight corridors and other freight routes. with many other added features, such as twin catenary height of 6 and 7.5 meters, auto upward-force adjustment to improve effective current collection in adverse conditions, thereby enabling reduction in energy consumption and allowing trains to run at much higher speeds.

Locomotives
WAG-12 locomotive is a class of Indian multi-frame electric locomotive that was developed in 2017 by Alstom. With a horsepower of 12,000 hp it is one of the most powerful locomotives in the world. These locomotives are being used on the existing dedicated freight corridors. WAG-9HH locomotive is a 9000 hp single-frame electric locomotive developed by Chittaranjan Locomotive Works to be used in Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC). The WAG-9 series are quite similar to the WAP-7 class locomotive but features a different gear ratio, which makes it suitable for heavy freight operations. They are also the freight-dedicated three-phase AC locomotives in the country fitted with IGBT.

Tracks
The Western DFC will have special head-hardened (HH) 250m-long rails welded using flash butt welding machines. The axle load of the track will be 32.5t compared to the existing 25t axle load used on Indian rail tracks.

Speed
As of December 2019, in the commissioned sections, a total of 4000 trains have been run. Some of the trains in the section are achieving the average speed of 99.38 kmph in EDFC and the average speed is 89.50 kmph in WDFC. Since its inauguration, on average 150 to 200 freight trains are running daily maintaining the average speed between 75 to 80 kmph. DFCC officials say that their target is to increase the operation to 300 trains daily with an average speed of 90 kmph, previously trails have been completed on sections with 99 kmph not on entire route.

Golden Quadrilateral Freight Corridor (GQFC)
GQFC has six DFCs; two are being implemented and the funding for the remaining four was approved in January 2018. The rail tracks linking the four largest metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, and the two diagonals of North-South Dedicated Freight Corridor (Delhi-Chennai) and East-West Dedicated Freight Corridor (Kolkata-Mumbai) are called the Golden Quadrilateral (GQFC). These carry 55% of the India Railway's freight traffic over a total 10122 km route length. The line capacity utilisation on the existing highly saturated shared trunk routes of Howrah-Delhi on the Eastern Corridor and Mumbai-Delhi on the Western Corridor varies between 115% and 150%. The surging requirement for the power generation requiring heavy coal movement, booming infrastructure construction and growing international trade has led to the conception of the GQFCs. Carbon emission reduction from DFCs will help DFCCIL claim carbon credits.

Impact
The dedicated freight corridors aim to bring down the cost of freight transport, by using electricity, longer trains with more capacity the western DFC utilises double stacking to transport more containers), thus helping Indian industries to become competitive in the world export market. These corridors will also help India achieve the targets it has committed to in the Paris Climate Accords, by switching from diesel propelled freight trains and fossil fuel-based road traffic to the electricity based railway locomotives. India is growing in renewable energy production, with most of the country's new electricity generation capacity being added through solar, wind and nuclear sources.

Goods trains on the dedicated freight corridor are running at speeds faster than Rajdhani trains, with one clocking a record 99.38 kmph. 3,077 trains ran on EDFC; the maximum speed so far was 99.98 kmph before the milestone was reached. On WDFC, the maximum speed of the 837 trains was 89.50 kmph.

The new generation pantograph allows an increase in the height of the overhead wires (catenary height) from the standard 6 m to 7.45 m, setting the world record for the "high reach pantograph for highest catenary for electric locomotives". This will also enable Indian railways to introduce double-decker passenger trains in high-density suburban passenger route and RORO cargo service across the Indian railways network. The Indian passenger railway network will be able to run semi-high speed and high-speed trains in the existing network, as 70% of cargo traffic will migrate to the dedicated freight corridors. It will also increase the distance between track centers to 5.3 m, allowing larger out-of-gauge trains. Only low platforms will be permissible.

The Eastern DFC may not be able to support RORO as it has height of 5.1 m compared to 7.1 m of the Western DFC. While the Konkan railway is the only railway zone in India, which has streamlined the RORO service and is able to save 75 million litre diesel fuel and related foreign exchange for the country. RORO services are deployed in East central railway, Northeast Frontier railway zones along with Konkan railway, but RORO has failed to be successful in existing electrical railway infrastructure because of the height of the overhead electrical wires.

Amazon India, which aims to increase its investment in the Indian market has begun to utilize the dedicated freight lines to reduce costs and enhance delivery times.

Logistic parks
Uttar Pradesh government has announced large logistic parks to be created in Meerut and Khurja due to its proximity to Ganga Expressway and being on the line of the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor.

Ashok Agarwal, national president, Indian Industries Association (IIA), said during the UP Investors Summit, "We have also received queries related to the allotment of land along the Ganga Expressway from investors. Most of the queries are for land in Meerut, Budaun and its adjoining areas."