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Santanu Sanyal

THE DEDICATED freight corridor proposal, mooted in the Railway Budget for 2005-06, has evoked mixed reactions — jubilation and apprehension. Jubilation because the government has decided to act on a project that was long overdue. Apprehension because unless the critical issues are handled properly and in time, the dedicated freight corridors to be created at a huge cost may not yield results.

Rail India Technical and Economic Services (RITES) has prepared an Inception Paper on the proposed dedicated freight corridors, outlining the issues requiring urgent attention before work on the project is actually taken up. It has also submitted the report to the Railways.

RITES is now working on a preliminary engineering and traffic survey to be finalised by December. Initially, the plan is to have two corridors covering the highly congested traffic routes — Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah.

The need for dedicated freight corridors can hardly be overemphasised. If the economy is to grow at 7-8 per cent, then the transport sector, covering all modes, has to grow at 9-10 per cent.

The Railways, it is felt, has to carry an additional 70-80 million tonnes of originating freight every year for the next few years to hit the one billion-tonne mark by 2010. Therefore the question: Is the Railways ready to handle the projected increase in traffic? Certainly not, if the network capacity remains unchanged at the current level, according to some experts.

True, in past half a century or so, originating freight loading has zoomed some 800 per cent — from 73 million tonnes in 1951 to more than 600 million tonnes in 2004-05 — despite a meagre 17 per cent increase in the network capacity during the period.

This has been possible because of the various measures adopted over the years by the Railways such as modernisation of locomotives, wagons, signalling systems, doubling of line, end-to-end running of goods trains bypassing yards, introducing air brakes in the place of vacuum brakes, automatic couplers in the place of screw couplers, roller bearings instead of plain bearing, and so on. However, it is also felt that these measures, already saturated, will not work any more. The Railways has to look for a new option — the construction dedicated freight corridors.

While the Railways has done reasonably well over the years in terms of freight loading and meeting transport demands, its share in the country's total freight traffic has declined from 89 per cent in 1950 to 37 per cent now.

The reasons for this are its inability to generate adequate network capacity, the problem of traffic mix and the low productivity of the freight cars arising mainly from restrictive moving dimensions.

First, the capacity generation: In the 1990s, the Railways created 135 billion tonne kilometers (btkm) of capacity compared to 368 btkm by the road sector. Between 2001 and 2005, the rail capacity added was a dismal 58 btkm while the road added four times as much.

With the National Highway Development Programme due for completion within a year or two, the gap will widen as the road vehicle efficiency will rise along with the possibility of a further depletion of the traffic share of the Railways. The Railways, therefore, need not only to sit up but also act to stop it.

Next, the problem of traffic mix: Over the years, the Railways invested in developing common infrastructure to handle under a single network a wide variety of traffic such as long-distance mail/express trains, slow-running passengers with frequent stops, suburban units and heavy haul freight and container services. This is surprising particularly when the requirements of passenger and freight services are very different.

The present amorphous system has helped none; it has only led to an inefficient system. Therefore, the various types of traffic should be progressive segregation of various types of traffic therefore should be undertaken, and to start with heavy haul freight services should be separated from passenger services.

Here arises the need for dedicated freight corridors. In fact, the objective of dedicated freight corridors is not only to expand the network capacity but also reduce the cost of transportation through improved wagon productivity.

The Indian Railways operates on a broad gauge system (1676 mm) while most other countries operate on a narrower gauge of either 1435 mm, known as standard gauge, or 1000 mm, known as meter gauge. The Railways has not been able to take full advantage of the wider gauge system, because, as some experts point out, the moving dimensions are rather restrictive, with the result that the payload-to-tare ratio ranges from 2.0 to 2.4 compared to 3.5-5.0 in standard and meter gauge systems.

This leads to a high freight cost of bulk transportation which is five-seven times of that in the US railroads in terms of purchasing power parity. There is, therefore, need for more liberalised moving dimensions to permit high productivity freight cars along with double stack and extra high containers. Given the Railways' wider gauge, it is possible to go for more liberal dimensions.

As early as 1913, the Indian Railways worked out the schedules of moving dimensions. In 1922, it modified the schedules suggesting that the 1913 schedules should continue for the existing network while all the future network should follow new schedules with more liberal dimensions.

In 1929, the Railways suggested that the 1913 specifications be scrapped and all networks, both existing and future, must be as per the new schedules. Then came the Great Depression and with it everything changed.

In 1936, the Railways decided to go back to the 1913 schedules, thus putting the clock back. Many experts now feel that the Railways should at least go back to its 1929 decision to scrap the 1913 schedules and bring everything to the 1922 specifications.

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