Modern and cost-efficient transport infrastructure is crucial to faster economic development. Not only does it enhance an economy’s competitiveness, it also catalyses industrial growth.
Indian Railways has been the lifeline of the nation, carrying ~1.2 billion tonne of freight and ~8.4 billion passengers annually. However, over the past few decades, it has been losing share in both freight and passenger transport to other modes.
Notably, the modal share of the railways in freight transport for lead distances beyond 300 km has declined from 52% in fiscal 2008 to 32% in fiscal 2019.
A number of factors have led to this, including the rapid development of road infrastructure, ramp-up of road logistics, changing consumer behaviour, and consumption and industrialisation patterns. On its part, railways has had to grapple with capacity constraints, relatively high tariffs, and limited commercial and marketing initiatives.
Capacity constraints due to insufficient investments in rail infrastructure and technological upgradation have been enduring bottlenecks to rail freight-traffic growth.
Another bugbear is that passenger and freight trains run on a common network in India. With the railways having to accord priority to passenger trains, the transit speed and time of freight trains have been a big issue.
According to a World Bank Policy Research Working Paper of 2018 titled “Unlocking India’s Logistics Potential”, while ~60% of India’s rail network capacity is deployed for passenger transport, it contributes only to ~30% of revenue.
In order to ease capacity logjams, the Ministry of Railways has been taking multiple initiatives to ramp up infrastructure. As part of this, implementation of the Eastern and Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) projects, which were conceived about a decade-and-a-half ago anticipating a quantum leap in rail freight transport demand, has been fast-tracked. While some sections of the Western and Eastern DFCs have already been commissioned, the entire project is expected to be commissioned by June 2022.
Once this seamless, new, freight-oriented infrastructure becomes operational, it is expected to be a game-changer for railways and India’s logistics. The design features of DFCs are far more superior to the existing rail network from a freight-transport perspective.
The enhanced carrying capacity because of doubling of train length and punctuality of transit on DFCs should give railways a competitive edge over other transport modes, enabling it to claw back lost freight share and capture new time-sensitive cargo categories.
Drawing upon the benefits of this freight-oriented infrastructure, the ministry has planned to develop additional DFCs linking major locations.
Overall, the proliferation of DFCs is expected to change rail-freight logistics for the better in India, and help Indian Railways regain edge over rival modes.
