The dedicated freight corridors can over the next few years contribute significantly to the financial health of the Indian Railways and help prevent passenger fares from flaring up, Kumar said.
He said that even though the high-speed corridors are expensive projects and recouping their capital costs will take years, once their efficiencies improve, they can contribute significantly to the railways‘ operational revenues.
“The Indian railways’ main traffic is freight which contributes 67% to the overall traffic while 33% is passenger traffic. With the commissioning of DFC, the freight percentage will go up further,” he said.
“The DFC corridors cost a staggering Rs 1,24,000 crore, but when the efficiencies are improved, a lot of cross-subsidy for the passenger services may be possible,” Kumar said at a PHDCCI event.
At present, the share of road transport in the overall logistics sector is 46% while the share of railways is just 26%. Kumar said that the plan is to reverse this on a “complementary basis”.
“We are not in competition with the road sector, but road networks must work in tandem with the railway transportation. We want to reverse this trend because rail is a sustainable mode of transportation,” he adds.
To boost the railways’ share, the government introduced PM Gati Shakti in October 2021. The intention is to build 200 Gati Shakti Cargo Terminals (GCT) under the public-private partnership over the next few years. DFCCIL has four GCTs operational with six more terminals slated to launch in FY26.
While both eastern and western DFCs are designed to handle 480 freight trains per day, Kumar said that the network is likely to surpass the design once the last section of western DFC — connecting Vaitarna to JNPT — becomes operational.
