Update on freight corridors in certain parts of the country

A total route length of 1,610 km,799 km of Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor and 811 km of Western Dedicated Freight Corridor has been completed out of the overall 2,843 km of the Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFCs) till October 2022, the Minister of Railways, Ashwini Vaishnaw, informed the Lok Sabha on December 22. 

Indian Railways’ mega infrastructure project, the Dedicated Freight Corridor, comprises the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC, from Dadri to Jawaharlal Nehru Port, 1,506 km) and Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC, from Ludhiana to Sonnagar, 1,337 km) totaling 2,843 route km.

The corridors connecting North and South and East and West remains in deep freeze by the Railways for the past ten years. The North South Corridor starts at Itarsi in central India to Vijaywada and three major ports owned by the center in Tamil Nadu would have no access to it. Most of the railway infrastructure projects be it bullet trains or vande bharat trains, strengthening of railway tracks modern signaling system are confined to western and Northern parts of the country according to EXIM Industry sources.

South is not on the radar of railway board for the past several decades.

The Minister also highlighted that the Joint Parcel Product (JPP) has been launched by the Railways in collaboration with India Post, which aims to target the business-to-customer (B2C) and business-to-business (B2B) market with focus on e-commerce and MSMEs. Under the ‘JPP’, India Post provides first & last mile services, and Indian Railways provides the middle mile services.