What is the need of Dedicated Freight corridors (DFC)

in India?

 The Indian Railways is one of the biggest railway systems in the

world.
 There is suboptimal usage of track capacity.
 Many countries have separate tracks for passenger and freight
traffic.
 freight trains are stopped for allowing faster passenger trains to
pass.
 While a freight train waits, the track remains unutilized, leading
to wastage of capacity.
 Steady increase in the number and speeds of passenger trains
and marginal increase in speeds of freight trains have continued
to impact track capacity negatively.
 The freight corridors are key to the government’s
infrastructure projects that Aim to

increase the
ensure faster national Reduce overall
decongest
movement of carrier’s freight logistics cost for
railway network
goods capacity companies
network
REVENUE SHARE PASSENGER V/S FREIGHT
  GDP growth has been 9%.

 Growth in transport demand is over

Infrastructural gaps 11%

 Elasticity of transport demand to

GDP of 1.25.

 Existing transport infrastructure is

not in line with growth due to
Slowdown of Highway projects.

 Capacities of trunk routes are

saturated as same network is used
for both Passenger and Freight.

 India’s logistic infrastructure is

inadequate due to changing
consumption patterns and
increased production centers.
Failing several times to meet its deadlines

green signal
way back in
2006

Rs 814
billion
targeted project finally
completion been set at
of the project
April 2020
was 2016-17
 COST EFFECT

Cost escalation from Rs 281.81 billion in 2008 to Rs 814.59

billion.

There was a Rs 44.52 billion increase in the land cost by 2014

itself.

The Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JBIC), has agreed

to provide about Rs 18,000 crore for the project.

JBIC has put the total cost of the project at Rs 50,000 crore double
than the estimation of the railways.
 The delay in completing the project was mainly due to

Lack of proper planning and implementation

DFCs have taken a decade due to delays in land acquisitions and

sanctioning loans

Queries emailed to the spokespersons of IR and DFCCIL remained

unanswered.

DFC has hit a snag due to problems of cost escalation and concern
over technology.

Railways have to acquire large swathes of private land that are already
developed

While the railways want to run double-stacked containers on diesel

locomotives, the JBIC has suggested electric ones, saying it is more
environment-friendly.
future Challenges
The project is crucial for Indian
Railways as it faces a stiff
competition from the road sector for
goods movement.

Rail transportation
1. offers complete rakes
2. does not cater to piecemeal
freight transportation
3. Rails are dependent on bulk cargo
4. we do not see this trend shifting
in near future.

Road transportation
1. offers end-to-end solutions
2. safer handling due to less number
of transfers.
3. better service quality
4. is more reliable.
A viable alternative Dedicated Passenger Corridors (DPCs) is also being
considered which can become a big challenge for DFC in future.
 The latest Budget states that
commissioning of the DFC would
create room for more passenger
services.
 Unless passenger tariff is rationalized,
adding more DFCs and running more
passenger services would only lead to
the losses going up further.
 Instead of new DFCs, the case for
Dedicated Passenger Corridors (DPCs)
could be considered.
 DPCs (either under the Railway Ministry
or as a separate company) would
create a separate carriageway for
passenger traffic where high-speed
trains could run, leaving the existing IR
network free to run the freight
services.