Surprisingly, for the sheer amount of revenues that freight generates for Indian Railways, it has received very little attention from people in general. For instance, the world knows Indian Railways to be the biggest network, transporting the largest number of people, but not many know that freight is almost 'the bread and butter' of Indian Railways, accounting for nearly 69% of the annual revenues. Take the case of last fiscal year, from April 1, 2012 to March 31, 2013, the total earnings stood at Rs. 124814.87 crores. Of which, earning from goods (or what we know as freight) stood at Rs. 85869.02 crores, with a whopping 23% increase in revenues over that of last year.In fact, what is not known to many is that, it is because of these revenues of freight that railways is actually able to keep the rates for passenger travel down. Thus, income from freight subsidises the expenditure on passenger travel.
Yet, for all the increase in freight revenues over the years and its importance for the economy, there has been not much discussion and deliberation on how to move it to the next level. Much of our freight still moves on the same corridor as that of passenger trains, thereby making it very inefficient. Unlike, say Class 1 Rail Road in North America, China, South Africa, Australia and other countries that have put in place an altogether different system for freight, India still lags in that aspect.
For instance, at present, freight trains move through the Howrah-Delhi and Mumbai-Delhi diagonals of the Golden Quadrilateral route, connecting the four metros. These high density corridors are overloaded with traffic of coaches and usually fall behind the stipulated time schedule. In fact, most of these pathways are incompetent to carry long freight trains.
It is disturbing to think about our industries going hungry for raw materials because of crippled transportation. Accessibility to commodities such as food grains, coal, fertilizers, cement, and petroleum products depends on the efficiency of a country’s transport system – the lifeline of a nation. And, a dedicated freight pathway is significant in streamlining this conveyance process. India came to terms with this reality in 2005 and it announced a Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) for freight movement on two routes – Eastern and Western.
Sadly, it’s nearly a decade and the DFC is yet to see the light of the day. Despite freight being the bread earner for the Indian Railways, the project to have a dedicated track for the wagons got stuck in limbo.
The DFC model has helped various foreign territories including the European Union, where overdependence on motor carriage was leading to congestion on roads, and environmental hazards. Europe has six-rail freight corridors which started operating last year. Terming these corridors as the rail backbone of the future, it has decided to add three more by the end of 2015.
The proposed corridors (the Eastern Corridor from Ludhiana in Punjab to Dankuni in West Bengal and the Western Corridor from Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai to Tughlakabad, Delhi) that will boost the speed of freight trains to an average of 65 km/hr as against the present 22 km/hr, was supposed to be completed by 2012. However, marred by a number of issues like land acquisition and cost over-runs, the new deadline is now 2017. The delay has also hugely impacted the proposed budget of Rs. 77,000 crore
It is due to lack of DFC that even with the growth in goods capacity, Indian Railways is losing freight traffic to road. In fact, according to a study done by Asia Development Bank, the share of freight traffic by rail has decreased from some 70% in the 1970s to around 30% now, whereas freight by road has increased to some 70% now. This does not augur well for railways.
It is important that like other countries that have leveraged the freight corridor through judicious steps, Indian Railways too needs to adopt some of the best practices followed abroad. For instance, instead of electric locomotives, railways should opt for diesel locomotives, as they have a better tractive power -- namely the ability to ferry heavier loads -- resulting in better efficiency and positive returns on investments. With so much being invested in creating these freight corridors, it is critical that modern technologies are leveraged to get maximum returns out of these investments. These freight corridors can be used to run long and heavier trains if technologies like GE's Locotrol are used to extend the length of the trains thereby maximizing the capacity utilization. This technology has been well adopted by Class 1 rail-road operators in North America and countries like China, South Africa and Australia, resulting in substantial gain in efficiencies and asset utilization.
Similarly, Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation (the apex body for its implementation) is considering traditional signalling technologies based on fixed block concept which is not an effective way to utilize capacity. It could rather consider Communication Based Train Control based on Virtual Block concept. A virtual block like ITCS from GE uses existing signals and communicates wirelessly about the train movement with a centralised control room, thereby increasing safety and security, and more importantly, the overall productivity, by facilitating an increase in the line capacity of the rail movement. The ITCS system has been successfully implemented in countries like the US and South Africa, and has shown significant improvement in terms of productivity gains, accrued from the signalling automation.
It is important that while huge amount of investment is being done in creating the infrastructure, a little attention on bringing in new and modern technologies can go a long way in ensuring that the maximum benefits are being derived from DFC.
The good news is that despite all initial hiccups, DFC seems to be back on track. Once completed, the project will benefit through coaches moving at a much faster speed than usual carriages. Consequently, DFC has been labelled as special purpose vehicle by the Government of India that will oversee the project. The new deadline for the completion of the two corridors is 2017. Over the same time, Indian Railways and other administrative bodies will need to build the requisite infrastructure around the DFC to ensure it adds the value anticipated from such an investment for this country.
In the end, it is not only important that a dedicated freight corridor is established, but also new and modern technologies and practices are adopted. Else, all the investments will fail to generate the kind of returns that they can. And the DFC might just end up as one of those wishful projects that had so much promise but such little impact.
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