The Indian Railways will award contracts for two dedicated freight corridors spanning 1,500 kilometres by the end of 2013-14, Railway Minister Pawan Bansal said today.
This will help the Railways, which is part of the 1 billion tonne freight club, compete against road transport.The Railways has revised its FY14 freight revenue target to Rs 93,554 crore, up 9 per cent.
Land acquisition for the nearly 2,800 km of the eastern and western freight corridors is almost complete, Mr Bansal said. The first major civil construction contract on the 343 km Kanpur-Khurja section of the eastern corridor has already been awarded, and preliminary engineering-cum-traffic studies (PETS) have been taken up on four future dedicated freight corridors.
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The Railways has set up an ambitious plan to construct a dedicated freight corridor across the country. Once completed, the corridors are expected to enable the Railways to improve customer orientation and meet market needs more effectively as well as decongest passenger network.
It set up a special purpose vehicle, Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL), to construct these corridors. In the first phase, DFCCIL will be constructing two corridors - the western DFC and eastern DFC- spanning a total length of about 3300 route km. The eastern corridor, starting from Ludhiana in Punjab, will pass through the states of Haryana, Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and terminate at Dankuni in West Bengal. The western corridor will traverse the distance from Dadri to Mumbai, passing through the states of Delhi, Haryana, Rajasthan, Gujarat and Maharashtra.
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