On The Slow Coach

Fifteen years in the making, only 650 km of the dedicated freight corridor has opened. Meeting the 3,381-km target by June 2022 appears a distant dream

- ASHUTOSH KUMAR

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated two sections of dedicated freight corridors (DFCs) in quick succession in December 2020 and January 2021. Immediately after, videos of kilometres long double-stack container trains chugging on the new lines emerged on social media handles of Ministry of Railways and Railway Minister Piyush Goyal. The trains hit top speed of 93 km per hour and average speed of 67 km per hour as against 23 km per hour clocked by a normal goods train in India.

The new lines — 351-km KhurjaBhaupur section of the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC) and 306-km Rewari-Madar section of the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC) — are barely 20 per cent of the corridor. The 1,875-km EDFC will connect Ludhiana in Punjab with Dankuni in West Bengal. WDFC is a 1,506-km corridor between Dadri in Uttar Pradesh and Jawaharlal Nehru Port Trust (JNPT) in Mumbai. The much-awaited project has seen multiple delays over the years due to land acquisition and other issues.

The entire project, stretching 3,381 kms, however, still has a long way to go. The two completed sections, spanning 650 kms, are less than one-fifth of the total length, surprising for a project that has been under construction for more than a decade and a half. Meeting the latest deadline of June 2022 — the original date of FY18-end was revised to March 2020 and then to December 2021 — is a tall order considering the stage at which the project is at present.