hIGHLIGHTS

The potential of these initiatives has not been assessed and established convincingly. Transportation of light and voluminous cargo in double stack formation of dwarf containers will improve throughput per train as compared to that in single stack operation in conventional ISO type containers. Indian Railways have a very limited fleet of the specialised low-bed rolling stock for transportation of laden road trailers. The RO-RO concept is primarily targeted at reducing congestion and pollution in NCR region and move towards greener transportation option. The road railers are still at experimental stage and their success depends on Indian Railways’ ability to develop adequate switching terminals and large private investment to develop the trade route. For dwarf containers, there is still no commercial tariff available with container train operators, and it will take four to six months to even begin the process of deploying these after manufacture etc. The railways seems to be in a hurry to introduce new ideas, which is a good thing as it indicates clearly that the intent to improve freight movement is in place. The bottle neck in the Ro-Ro service for CTOs is unavailability of a Railway land where the trucks can be loaded and off loaded. The revenue model is not suitable on long term for CTOs. The sector needs to innovate to recover some of the business that it has lost to road. The good news now is that the Indian Railways is now dialoguing and no longer working encased in its own version of reality.