The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL) is a corporation run by the Ministry of Railways (India) to undertake planning & development, mobilisation of financial resources and construction, maintenance and operation of the Dedicated Freight Corridors. DFCC has been registered as a company under the Companies Act 1956 on 30 October 2006.
It is both enabler and beneficiary of other key Government of India schemes, such as Bharatmala, Sagarmala, UDAN-RCS, BharatNet, Digital India, Make in India and Industrial corridors.
Video Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India
Historical Perspective
Accordingly, the seeds for the project were sown as early as in April, 2005, wherein, Honourable Prime Ministers of India and Japan made a joint declaration for feasibility and possible funding of the dedicated rail freight corridors. Honourable Minister for Railways, almost at the same time, announced in the Parliament the need and planning for the project. Immediately thereafter, RITES was entrusted with the feasibility study of both eastern and western corridors.
In May 2005, Committee on Infrastructure (COI) constituted a Task Force, chaired by Shri Anwarul Huda, Member Planning Commission to prepare a concept paper on Delhi-Mumbai (Western) and Delhi-Howrah (Eastern) dedicated freight corridor projects, and to suggest a new organizational structure for planning, financing, construction and operation of these corridors.
In January 2006, RITES submitted the Feasibility Study Report of both the corridors to Ministry of Railways. Almost simultaneously, the Cabinet approved the report of the Task Force of the COI, which directed that a SPV should be set up to construct and operate the DFC. Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) gave "in principle" approval to the Feasibility Study report asking the MOR to go ahead with Preliminary Engineering cum Traffic Survey (PETS) for the two corridors, firm up the cost of the project and work out the financing options. In consonance with the recommendation of the Task Force of COI, a SPV, named "Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited" (DFCCIL) was incorporated under Companies Act in October 2006. Subsequently, RITES submitted the PETS Report based on which the project was approved at a cost of Rs.281.81 billion.
Maps Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India
Dedicated Freight Corridors
Under the Eleventh Five Year Plan of India (2007-12), Ministry of Railways is constructing a new Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) in two long routes namely, the Eastern and Western freight corridors. The two routes covers a total length of 3,360 kilometres (2,090 mi), with the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor stretching from Ludhiana in Punjab to Dankuni in West Bengal and the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor from Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai (Maharashtra) to Dadri in Uttar Pradesh. Upgrading of transportation technology, increase in productivity and reduction in unit transportation cost are the focus areas for the project.
DFCCIL has been designated by Government of India as a `special purpose vehicle`, and has been created to undertake planning & development, mobilization of financial resources and construction, maintenance and operation of the Dedicated Freight Corridors. DFCCIL has been registered as a company under the Companies Act 1956 on 30 October 2006.
Necessity
Economic liberalization of 1991 followed by Information Technology industry explosion have taken India to a new growth scenario. Backed by strong fundamentals and commendable growth in the past three to four years, the resplendent Indian Economy is poised to grow even further at an average of 8 to 10% in the next 3 years. Transport requirement in the country, being primarily a derived demand, is slated to increase with elasticity of 1.25 with GDP growth by 10 to 12% in the medium and long term range. Riding on the waves of economic success, Indian Railways has witnessed a dramatic turn around and unprecedented financial turnover in the last two and a half years. This has been made possible by higher freight volumes without substantial investment in infrastructure, increased axle load, reduction of turn-round time of rolling stock, reduced unit cost of transportation, rationalization of tariffs resulting in improvement in market share and improved operational margins. Over the last 2 to 3 years, the railway freight traffic has grown by 8 to 11%, which is projected to cross 1100 million tonnes by the end of 11th Five Year Plan.
Golden Quadrilateral Freight Corridor (GQFC)
The Ministry of road, transport and highways linking the four metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Kolkata, commonly known as the Golden Quadrilateral; and its two diagonals (North-South Dedicated Freight Corridor and East-West Dedicated Freight Corridor), adding up to a total route length of 10,122 km (6,290 mi) carries more than 55% of revenue earning freight traffic of Indian Railways.
The existing trunk routes of Howrah-Delhi on the Eastern Corridor and Mumbai-Delhi on the Western Corridor are highly saturated, line capacity utilization varying between 115% to 150%. The surging power needs requiring heavy coal movement, booming infrastructure construction and growing international trade has led to the conception of the Dedicated Freight Corridors along the Eastern and Western Routes. Carbon emission reduction may help DFCCIL to claim carbon credits.
Sanctioned Dedicated Freight Corridors
- Western Dedicated Freight Corridor, (Dadri, Uttar Pradesh to Jawaharlal Nehru Port, Mumbai -- 1,468 km).
- Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor, (Ludhiana, Punjab to Dankuni, West Bengal -- 1,760 km).
Planned Dedicated Freight Corridors
- East-West Dedicated Freight Corridor - connecting Kolkata and Mumbai, 2,000 km-long
- North-South Dedicated Freight Corridor - connecting Delhi and Chennai, 2,173 km long
- East Coast Dedicated Freight Corridor - connecting Kharagpur with Vijayawada, 1,100 km East Coast corridor
- South-West Dedicated Freight Corridor - connecting Chennai and Goa, 890 km-long -
- This DFC goes through Bangalore-Chennai Industrial Corridor promoted by Japan & India and as a part of Bangalore-Mumbai Economic corridor promoted by UK & India.
Proposed Dedicated Freight Corridors
- Chennai - Goa Dedicated Freight Corridor
- This DFC goes through Bangalore-Chennai Industrial Corridor promoted by Japan & India.(There are proposals to extend this line to Mangalore to connect India's biggest Petrochemical complex, international air-cargo facility(direct flights to gulf and Europe) and major seaport in Mangalore with Whitefield ICD(Inland Container Depot), through a tunnel being constructed with the help of Japan in Western ghats. This will result in hazardous petrochemicals currently being transported by road through tankers migrated to the railway cargo, resulting in efficiency improvements in country's energy security and safety to the common people living alongside national highways).
Table Showing Dedicated Freight Corridors in India
Green background for the systems that are under construction. Blue background for the systems that are currently in planning.
Conversion to high-speed corridors
IR will convert 10,000km passenger and freight trunk routes in to High-speed rail corridors of India over 10 years with total investment of INR20,000,000 million (US$310 billion) and annual investment of INR2,000,000 million (US$31 billion) from 2017-2027, where half of the money will be spent on converting exiting routes into high-speed corridors by leap-frogging the technology and the rest will be used to develop the stations and electronic signaling at the cost of INR600,000 million (US$9.4 billion) to enable automated running of trains at 5-6 minutes frequency. Freight corridors of 3,300 km length will also be completed thus freeing the dual use high demand trunk routes for running more high-speed passenger trains.
Transformational effect on Indian economy and railway
- Freight trains with 1.5 km length, 3660 mm width and 7.1 metre height clearance, a first and only in the world.
- Double-stack standard shaped containers transported through electric locomotives with trailing loads of 15000 ton and trains with 400 container capacity, a first and only in the world.
- Bridges & formation to support 32.5 Ton axle load and track loading capacity of 12 t/m, a first at a large scale and travel distance.
- 800 electric locomotives with 12,000 HP, biggest deployment of very high horse-powered locomotive anywhere in the world.
- High speed freight trains running above 100+ km/h, one of the few in the world.
- Radio communication and GSM based tracking of all trains - a first in Indian railway sector.
- DFC corridor has no level crossings and uses one of the most advanced construction techniques to improve the quality and speed of construction.
- DFC aims to bring down the cost of freight transport using electrical fuel, bigger and larger trains. This will help Indian industry to become competitive in the world export market.
- DFC will help India to achieve target committed by India in the Paris climate accord, by migrating from diesel propelled freight trains and fossil fuel based road traffic to electricity based railway locomotives. India is leader in renewable energy with most of the new electricity generation capacity is added using solar, wind and nuclear sources.
- The new generation pantograph allows an increase in the highest of the overhead wires (catenary height) from the standard 6 meters to 7.5 meters-setting the world record for the High Reach pantograph for highest catenary for electric locomotives. This will also enable Indian Railways to introduce double-decker passenger trains in high density suburban passenger route and Ro-Ro cargo service across the Indian Railways network.
- Indian passenger railway network will be able to run semi-high speed and high speed trains in the existing network as cargo traffic will migrate to DFC.
- Eastern DFC may not be able to support RoRo as it has height of 5.1 meter compared to 7.1 meter of the Western DFC. Because of this only Western DFC may be able to support RoRo services. Konkan railway is the only railway zone in India, which has streamlined the RoRo service and able to save 750 lakh litre diesel and related foreign exchange for the country. RoRo services are deployed in East Central, Northeast Frontier railway zones along with Konkan Railway. But, RoRo has been failed to be successful in existing electrical railway infrastructure because of the height of the overhead electrical wires.
Related Initiative - Heavy Haul Rail Corridor
Indian Port Rail Company Limited (IPRCL) has proposed of laying the third and fourth broad gauge railway line from Salegaon in Maharashtra to Paradip and Dhamra ports both on Odisha Coast. The railway lines will be dedicated to carry freight and mostly thermal coal. The development of this project will give a fillip to the government's initiative to promote multi modal logistics and Coastal shipping.
See also
- High-speed rail in India
- Indian Railways
- Rail Transport in India
References
External links
- Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) Official Website
- Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India (DFCCIL) Official link for project status
- DFCC will use New Track Construction machine having capacity of 1.5 KM of track per day
- March 2014 news article stating near total land acquisition and environmental clearances
- DFCCIL Admit card at Official Site
Source of the article : Wikipedia
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