Indian Railway is undergoing a massive revolution which aims to change the whole logistics landscape of india and also to make the path to make the country an Economic Supergiant. To exploit the full potential of the Indian railway government announced the project called DFC ( Dedicated Freight Corridor).
The Dedicated Freight Corridor project proposes to build a network of broad gauge railway lines to be used only for freight trains. The DFC mainly consisted of two corridors – EDFC (Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor) and WDFC (Western Dedicated Freight Corridor). The project aims to increase industrialization, job opportunities, foreign direct investment, and reduce logistics costs, time, traffic congestion and fuel consumption by building rail tracks only for freight trains, improving rail tracks, and increasing speed. The project will enhance port connectivity of key industrial areas and will also help India achieve net zero carbon emissions by 2070.
An autonomous body named DFCCIL (Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation India Limited) has been set up to maintain and prevent, the implementation and irregularities respectively.
EDFC and WDFC include approximately 1337 km and 1506 km of rail tracks respectively, estimated to be worth approximately ₹81,000 crore including multimodal logistics park and other infra. But due to the Covid pandemic, increase in land cost and various other factors, the estimated cost of the project has increased to ₹ 1.24 lakh crore.
Majority ratio amount of EDFC and WDFC. Funded by the World Bank and Japan International Cooperation Agency respectively.
About 95 percent of the work of EDFC and WDFC has been completed and the remaining work is targeted to be completed by the end of 2024.
In FY 2024-25, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman announced 3 new freight corridors under DFC, named East-Coast Corridor, East-West Sub Corridor and North-South Corridor of approximately 1115 km, 1868 km and 975 km respectively. The cost of the corridor estimated to be around ₹2.17 lakh crore. These 3 new corridors will also help in growing India’s cement, minerals and energy sectors and boost its logistics connectivity.
The government has also proposed to construct an 892 km long stretch of SDFC (Southern Dedicated Freight Corridor) to boost rail logistics connectivity in the southern states.
The project comes under NRP (National Railway Plan), DFC is inspired by the National Highway Golden Quadrilateral Network and Railways has making its own GQFC (Golden Quadrilateral Freight Corridor) by connecting four major cities Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Howrah through a dedicated freight corridor.
The government estimates that DFC will help to reduce logistics costs from 13-15 per cent of GDP to 8 per cent. Under the NRP, Indian Railway aims to increase freight movement by rail to 3000 million tonnes by 2030 as well as increase the share of freight movement by rail from 27 per cent to 45 per cent.
The benefits of DFC are also becoming visible, in the financial year 2022-2023, Railways transported 1512 million tonnes of freight and earned above Rs 1.35 lakh crore and also the freight train speed increases from 20-25 km/hr to 60 km/hr.
The DFC is also expected to create 42,000 jobs.
The Dedicated Freight Corridor project aims to make India a new economic superpower by increasing the efficiency and effectiveness of logistics connectivity by rail and making the country economically prosperous.