Indian Railways is planning to operationalise over 1,300 route km of the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor by the end of this year, a senior Railway Board member aware of the developments told.
On August 2, the Railways completed track linking work on the Sonnagar – Ludhiana stretch, and as per Railway officials over 77 per cent of the project has been commissioned by June-end.
Track linking and commissioning of small parts of the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor are already underway.
The current 1,337 route km, that is being developed by the Railways, passes by Sahnewal in Punjab, crosses through two other states – Uttar Pradesh and Haryana – and terminates at Sonnagar in Bihar.
Another part of 538 route km – also a part of the Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor – between Sonnagar and West Bengal’s Dankuni was proposed to be developed under a PPP model.
The Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor originally had a route length of over 1,850 km, traversing through six states – Punjab (89 km), Haryana (72 km), UP (1078 km), Bihar (239 km), Jharkhand (195 km) and West Bengal (203 km) and consists of two distinct segments – an electrified double-track segment of 1,409 km between Dankuni in West Bengal and Khurja in Uttar Pradesh, and an electrified single-track segment of 447 km across Ludhiana (Dhandarikalan) – Khurja – Dadri in the state of Punjab, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.
Due to non-availability of space near important city centers and industrial townships, the alignment of the corridor takes a detour to bypass densely populated towns such as DDU (Deen Dayal Upadhyay), Allahabad, Kanpur, Etawah, Ferozabad, Tundla, Barhan, Hathras, Aligarh, Hapur, Meerut, Saharanpur, Ambala, Rajpura, Sirhind, Doraha and Sanehwal.
The Eastern Corridor is targeted at coal-bearing regions, movement of finished steel, food grains, cement, fertilisers, limestone from Rajasthan to steel plants in the east, and general goods. It is expected to bring down costs substantially.
“The Dedicated Freight Corridor alignment, except a stretch between JNPT (Jawahar Nehru Port Trust) and Vaitarna, is expected to be operational by this year-end,” the official said adding that with land issues along the stretch now being resolved, “it should take another year for this segment to be operational”.
The Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor will meet the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor at Dadri in Uttar Pradesh.
The official said, 1,046 km of Western Dedicated Freight Corridor and 1,150 km of Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (total 2,196 km) have already been commissioned. The Western leg of this Dedicated Freight Corridor will connect Dadri in Uttar Pradesh to JNPT port in Mumbai and will pass through Haryana (177 km), Rajasthan (565 km), Gujarat (565 km) and Maharashtra (177 km), in addition to UP.