Because the final leg of Western Devoted Freight Hall (WDFC) — Vaitarna to Jawaharlal Nehru Port Terminal — is nearing completion, the Devoted freight hall company of India restricted (DFCCIL) is eyeing for the approval of recent devoted freight hall initiatives and improvement of extra Gati Shakti Multimodal terminals.
Talking on the sidelines of the International Heavy Haul Seminar 2025 at Bharat Mandapam, Praveen Kumar, Managing Director, DFCCIL on Friday mentioned the corporate will prioritise the East-coast hall — Kharagpur in West Bengal to Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh — for approval, which is without doubt one of the three newly proposed corridors whose Detailed Challenge Report was submitted to the Ministry of Railways, and awaits sanction.
“The Ministry of Railways will take choices on these initiatives. For sanctioning of those initiatives, we are going to prioritize the East-coast hall, which runs from Kharagpur in West Bengal to Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh. After that, the choice on the approval of the East-West hall (Kharagpur to Palghar) and the North-South hall (Itarsi to Vijayawada) could also be taken. It can require an funding of 4.5 lakh crore for these three corridors,” mentioned Kumar.
The final stretch of the 1,506 km lengthy WDFC, from Dadri in Uttar Pradesh to JNPT (Navi Mumbai) will likely be commissioned by December, Kumar added. The 1,856 km lengthy Japanese Devoted Freight Hall from Ludhiana (Punjab) to Dakuni (West Bengal), is absolutely operational.
“Due to these two corridors the pace of trains have elevated to about 45 to 50 km/h. Whereas the pace of trains on different Indian Railways networks is 20-25km/h. Although our part and locomotives are able to working 100 kmph, the pace of rolling inventory (wagon) is proscribed. Western hall has largely container site visitors and the Japanese hall has largely coal site visitors. Due to deployment of recent expertise on the hall, the transit time has decreased by virtually 50 p.c. The thermal energy crops have additionally decreased their stock due to reliable freight operation on these corridors,” mentioned Kumar to The Indian Specific.
He additional mentioned that as a result of freight has shifted to the DFCC community, the passenger service has additionally improved.
“The punctuality of adjoining railways equivalent to North Central Railway (NCR), North Western Railway (NWR), Northern Railway, Japanese Railway and East Central Railway (ECR) has improved as a result of there is no such thing as a stress for working freight trains on their community. Presently, we’re working round 400 trains on DFCC and the potential is to run 480 trains as soon as the JNPT is linked. Our complete community is 4 p.c of Indian Railways and we supply 13 p.c of complete Gross tonne-kilometres (GTKM),” mentioned DFCCIL MD.
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Praveen Kumar additionally mentioned that DFCCIL is taking over many enterprise improvement initiatives and establishing Gati Shakti Multi-Modal terminal in an enormous method.
“Now we have commissioned 4 terminals thus far and on this monetary 12 months, we’re planning to fee six extra terminals. Now we have a particular scheme known as Truck on Practice (TOT). Now we have began carrying milk vehicles from Palanpur in Gujarat to Rewari in Haryana. It can present final mile connectivity. This site visitors was earlier happening Highways,” mentioned Kumar.
Speaking in regards to the function of the seminar, MD Kumar mentioned that specialists from totally different international locations shared applied sciences developed within the heavy haul sector and it is going to be carried out in DFCC to enhance effectivity of the community.
