Delhi-Chandigarh-Amritsar rly section identified for high-speed corridor

NEWDELHI: The railways has identified six new high-speed and semi-high speed rail corridors in the country and also four new dedicated freight corridors, and the detailed project reports on these sections has been sought.

Railway Board chairman VK Yadav said the railways has identified six new corridors for high-speed or semi-high speed, including 865km Delhi-Agra-Lucknow-Varanasi, 886km Delhi-Jaipur-Udaipur-Ahmedabad, 753km Mumbai-Nashik-Nagpur, 711km Mumbai-Pune-Hyderabad, 435km Chennai-Bengaluru-Mysuru and 459km Delhi-Chandigarh-Ludhiana-Jalandhar-Amritsar corridors.

He said the internal study on the traffic potential and feasibility has been made for these corridors and on the funding aspect the railways is thinking of public private partnership or loan from the international agencies. Yadav said the work on the dedicated freight corridor will be completed by December 2021.

The 3,373km DFC, a flagship project, aims to augment rail transport capacity to meet rrequirement of movement of goods by segregating freight from passenger traffic.

The Western DFC runs from

Jawaharlal Nehru Port in Mumbai to Tughlakabad and Dadri near Delhi, and aims to cater largely to the container transport requirements between the existing and emerging ports in Maharashtra and Gujarat and the northern hinterland.

The 1,839 km Eastern DFC runs from Ludhiana in Punjab to Dankuni near Kolkata — to be extended in future to serve the new deep-sea port proposed in the Kolkata area, and will largely handle coal and steel traffic. The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India plans to run freight trains at a maximum speed of 100kmph as against the current 75kmph. It plans to increase average speed of freight trains from 26kmph to 70kmph on the DFC.

INTERNAL STUDY ON TRAFFIC POTENTIAL AND FEASIBILITY HAS BEEN MADE FOR THE 459-KM CORRIDOR