Line and length

Chamatkaar hoga,8221; says Lalu Prasad on how the new, dedicated freight corridor the Railways has on the drawing board will change the face of freight movement in the country.

Chamatkaar hoga,8221; says Lalu Prasad on how the new, dedicated freight corridor the Railways has on the drawing board will change the face of freight movement in the country. Coming from a man blessed with the gift of gab, it8217;s easy to dismiss his reading as an overstatement. But one look at the lines being drawn by the Railways suggests the minister8217;s bluster has some basis. The Railways is thinking big and well into the future.

But first the present. The Golden Quadrilateral, which connects Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, along with its two diagonals, is the main mover of rail freight traffic. Although it accounts for just 16 per cent of track area, it carries 66 per cent of the total freight transported by the Railways. And following the freight traffic growth of 50 per cent in the past three years, it8217;s facing saturation, to the point where the Railways is plying more trains on some routes than it should be doing. The

Delhi-Howrah route has a line utilisation of 114-160 per cent, Delhi-Mumbai 115-150 per cent.

With freight traffic in the country expected to grow at 18-20 per cent a year, the Railways desperately need new lines, especially on the busy Golden Quadrilateral route. So, on the drawing board is a dedicated freight corridor that connects these metros after winding its way through important mineral belts and touching major ports. The complete project is still taking shape, but officials involved in its working are talking of a total capital cost of 8212; hold your breath 8212; Rs 65,000 crore.

In the first phase, the Delhi-Mumbai and the Delhi-Howrah from Ludhiana to Son Nagar lines will be laid out at a total cost of Rs 22,400 crore See map, and are scheduled to be completed in five to seven years. Freight traffic on the Delhi Howrah route mainly comprises minerals like coal and iron ore.

There isn8217;t substantial movement of containerised traffic for lighter goods 8212; which forms bulk of the traffic on the Delhi-Mumbai route 8212; on this route, though the numbers, both in absolute and percentage terms, are only expected to increase.

The Railways has also announced surveys for four other links on the Golden Quadrilateral: Delhi-Chennai, Howrah-Chennai, Howrah-Mumbai and Mumbai-Chennai. Says

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R.K Singh, former chairman, Railway Board, in whose tenure the freight corridor project was first floated: 8220;We need a dedicated freight corridor to service effectively the needs of a growing economy.8221;

A dedicated line, besides giving the Railways additional freight carrying capacity, will also address several glaring limitations of the current freight network, which do not enable the Railways to maximise the revenue-generation potential of this business. At present, goods trains run on the same lines as passenger trains, and get second preference. It8217;s quite common for 10-15 goods trains to be stopped to let an Express passenger pass. The proposed new freight corridor will be for freight trains only. As a result, their average speed is expected to rise several fold from the current 25 km per hour 8212; Railways officials say the objective is to match the 150 km per hour that goods trains in China do.

The other Chinese benchmark the Indian Railways wants to match, if not better, is the number of wagons carried by a goods train. In China, even at that high speed, the average is 150 wagons, whereas the average in India is 65 wagons. Now, imagine the increase in productivity because of such a manifold increase in haulage and a similar decrease in delivery and turnaround time. 8220;The freight corridor will ultimately benefit customers through improved services and better efficiency,8221; says Singh.

Finding the money for this ambitious Rs 65,000 crore freight corridor project is not going to be easy for an entity that is making more and more money, but is never short of takers for that surplus. Given its growth trajectory and its current state of finances, the Railways is capable of part-funding the freight corridor project. For 2005-06, the Railways is expected to post a net profit of Rs 12,966 crore, which, officials say, is likely to double this year. So, the Railways plans to use about Rs 8,500 crore of its own funds to finance the first phase of this project. The Railways is also talking to the government of Japan to extend loans at lower than market rates for the project.

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The rail lines are one link in this grand and intricate design. Another crucial link is finding synergies with its main competitor 8212; roads 8212; which has a cost advantage over the Railways in transporting lighter goods. So, it is looking to build partnerships with road transporters to move freight between rail depots and interior areas. The opportunity presented by a growing economy and inadequate infrastructure to make that big leap is there. So is the intent on the part of the Railways. But how they8217;re executed over the next few years remains to be tracked.