Freight volume on the dedicated freight corridors has zoomed in the current financial year and are at double the level of last fiscal. This is helping the corridors, the eastern and western segments of which became operational last year, to raise its share in the overall freight volume handled by the country’s rail network.
According to official sources with the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd (DFCCIL), netween April and October 2024, freight gauged as net tonne kilometers (NTKMs) on the corridor stood at 62,282 million which is equivalent of 292.4 million per day. The corresponding number for the last year was 32,164 million, or 151 million per day. The doubling of the freight traffic is on account of 522 kms of DFC network – 294 km in eastern DFC and 228 km in western DFC – coming into operations in FY24.
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“We are expecting a further 20% jump in freight traffic after the remaining 102 kms of stretch on the western DFC is likely to be completed by the end of 2025. The traffic earnings for FY25 are also expected to surpass previous records by a huge margin,” said the official.
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The Vaitarna-JNPT (Jawaharlal Nehru Port) section of the western corridor is the last leg of this mega project which has been facing delays due to execution challenges. In 2017, for instance, Tata Projects was awarded the contract for this stretch but due to the slow progress, DFCCIL terminated the contract in 2022. Later, the termination was revoked after Tatas promised to speed up the work.
The official said that there’s a steady shift of freight traffic from railways to DFC. In July, for instance, the DFC was carrying nearly 10% of the railways freight load. By October, this number has jumped to 13%.
“Our mandate was to take over 70% of the railways’ traffic on the sections running parallel to eastern DFC and western DFC.
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