The Eastern and Western Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFC) are a mega rail transport project being undertaken to increase transportation capacity, reduce unit costs of transportation, and improve service quality.
The dedicated freight-only lines are being built along the four key transportation routes – known as the Golden Quadrilateral and connecting Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Howrah and its two diagonals (Delhi – Chennai and Mumbai – Howrah), covering a total of 10,122 km, these corridors carry the heaviest traffic and are highly congested.
The DFCs which are under implementation are -
Western Dedicated Freight Corridor, 1,468 km from Dadri in Uttar Pradesh to Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai.
Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor, (Ludhiana, 1,760 km from Punjab to Dankuni in West Bengal.
Some more corridors are also approved in January 2018, that are
East-West Dedicated Freight Corridor, 2,000 km-long from Kolkata to Mumbai
North-South Dedicated Freight Corridor, 2,173 km long from Delhi to Chennai
East Coast Dedicated Freight Corridor, 1,100 km long from Kharagpur to Vijayawada
South-West Dedicated Freight Corridor, 890 km-long from Chennai to Goa, this DFC goes through Bangalore-Chennai Industrial Corridor promoted by Japan & India and as a part of Bangalore-Mumbai Economic Corridor promoted by UK & India.
The biggest issue with this project is failing of the deadlines of completion of these corridors and at present it is again set for 2020. Although, it has not been able to meet completion schedules so far due to various reasons, including procedural wrangles, land acquisition, environment clearances and other related issues.
Freight corridor permit the trains to carry higher loads, in a more reliable manner and these lines are also being built to maximize speeds to 100 km an hour, up from the current average freight speed of 20 km an hour.
Currently, railways share in freight transportation is about 36 per cent of total goods transported in the country and the Railways aims to increase it substantially.
