Dedicated Freight Corridors

New Freight Corridor

• Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated the New Rewari-New Madar section of the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor and flagged off the world’s first 1.5-km-long electrified double stack long haul container train.
• Mr. Modi said the project was part of the mission to modernise the country’s infrastructure and was being seen as a game changer for the India of 21st century.
• The section, which became operational after a hard work of five to six years, would be beneficial to farmers, industrialists and businessmen in the National Capital Region, Haryana and Rajasthan.

Significance

• The corridor would lead to the development of growth centres and points in several cities, creation of job opportunities and conditions attracting more investments.
• It would give a new fillip to the local industries and manufacturing units by providing them faster and cheaper access to the national and international markets.
• They would get easy access to the ports in Gujarat and Maharashtra.
• In all, 133 railway stations in nine States would be impacted by the Dedicated Freight Corridor.
• New multi-model logistic parks, freight terminals, container depots/terminals and parcel hubs would be developed at these places.
• It would not only benefit villages, farmers, the poor and the small businesses, but also attract big manufacturers, he said.
• With the launch of the double stack long haul container train between New Ateli in Haryana and New Kishanganj in Rajasthan, India had also entered the club of nations with such high capabilities.

Northeast link

• Given the rapid infrastructural expansion, all the Northeast State capitals would soon be linked to the national rail network. The work of indigenously developing high-speed tracks was also under way.
• Earlier, Mr. Modi listed several initiatives, including a digital payment of Rs.18,000 crore to farmers under the direct benefit transfer scheme, taken by the government in the past couple of weeks, to highlight the speed with which important projects were being implemented despite the COVID-19 induced crisis.

Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC):

• It is a high speed and high capacity railway corridor that is exclusively meant for the transportation of freight, or in other words, goods and commodities.
• DFC involves the seamless integration of better infrastructure and state of the art technology.
• DFC consists of two arms:

1. Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC)
2. Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC)

Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC):

• It starts at Sahnewal (Ludhiana) in Punjab and ends at Dankuni in West Bengal.
• The EDFC route has coal mines, thermal power plants and industrial cities. Feeder routes are also being made for these.
• The EDFC route covers Punjab, Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar, Jharkhand and West Bengal
• The World Bank is funding a majority of the EDFC.
• The 351-km-long ‘New Bhaupur-New Khurja section’ will decongest the existing Kanpur-Delhi main line and double the speed of freight trains from 25 kmph to 75 kmph.

Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC):

• The other arm is the around 1,500-km WDFC from Dadri in Uttar Pradesh to Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust in Mumbai, touching all major ports along the way.
• The WDFC covers Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat, Maharashtra and Uttar Pradesh.
• It is being funded by the Japan International Cooperation Agency.
• Connecting Link for Eastern and Western Arm: It is under construction between Dadri and Khurja.
• The industrial corridor of Delhi-Mumbai and Amritsar-Kolkata are also being developed around both these DFCs.

Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd.

• DFCCIL under the Ministry of Railways is a special purpose vehicle tasked with planning and completion of 3,306 kms of DFCs.
• It is headquartered in New Delhi and is a Public Sector Undertaking (PSU).
• It engages in the planning and development, deployment of monetary resources, building, upkeep, and the operation of the DFCs.