The Centre has announced a new freight corridor between Kharagpur in West Bengal and Vijayawada in Andhra Pradesh named East Coast Freight Corridor, besides the ongoing projects of the Eastern and Western freight corridors being developed by Indian Railways unit Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India ltd (DFCCIl).
The newly appointed DFCCIl Managing Director Anurag Sachan said that India's third freight corridor between Kharagpur and Vijaywada sections will come up at a cost of about `44,000 crore next year. The project has been called the East Coast Corridor and will be 1,114 km in length and is part of the Golden Quadrilateral project of Indian Railways.
"DFCCIl has sent a proposal to Indian Railways to undertake the third dedicated freight corridor project. Indian Railways is going to put the project before the Finance Ministry for its inclusion in Budget 2019-20," Sachan told The Pioneer.
Sachan also shared that on the Independence Day the DFCCIl conducted a successful train run on the newly-built Ateli-Phulera section of the Western Corridor. The 190-km route from Haryana to Rajasthan has the ability to run trains at a speed of 100 km per hour against the current maximum speed of 75 km per hour on Indian Railways track. Once operational, the corridors will increase the national transporter freight carrying capacity to over 2,000 million tonnes, up from the existing 1,200 million tonnes.
The Kharagpur-Vijaywada section is one of the busiest routes in East Coast. The project will be funded using equity from Indian Railways and loans. The corridor, which is expected to carry about 200 million tonnes of freight per annum, is likely to be announced in the budget proposal for 2019-20.
The DFCC will be making 432 km of the western corridor and 343 km of the eastern corridor operational by the end of the current financial year. Once open, the stretches on the western and the eastern corridors will significantly reduce the travel time between Delhi and Mumbai and Delhi and Howrah, the two most congested rail routes in the country.
DFCCIl, an arm of Indian Railways is already undertaking the construction of two freight corridors-Eastern Freight Corridor from ludhiana to Dankuni (1,856km) and Western Freight Corridor from Dadri to Jawaharlal Nehru Port (1,504km)-being built at a cost of `81,000 crore.
Sachan, a 1981 batch Indian Railway Service of Engineers (IRSE) officer, assumed the charge of MD DFCCIl last week. He has executed a large number of extremely challenging and technologically advanced Railway infrastructure projects during his 35 year long career with the Indian Railways. Prior to this assignment, Sachan was serving as Chief Administrative Officer Udhampur-Srinagar- Baramulla Rail link Project.