Dedicated rail freight corridor is set for record capital expenditure this financial year, with a projected spending of over ₹14,000 crore. Railway Board Chairman and CEO VK Yadav said this in a conference here Saturday. In terms of capital expenditure spent on contracts, Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Ltd (DFCCIL) spent ₹ 12,263 crore in fiscal 2020, ₹ 10,034 crore in fiscal 2019.
In the first eight months this fiscal, DFCCIL had spent ₹ 6.062 crore, higher than the ₹ 5,075 crore spend in the corresponding time last year.
Yadav added that the Kanpur-Khurja section – which is one of the busiest section and handles 115 trains – will be inaugurated soon by the Prime Minister. Of those 115 trains, 60 are freight trains and 55 are passenger trains.
The 60 freight trains will migrate to the DFC after opening up of Khurja-Bhaupur section, taking the load off of existing Indian Railway tracks. This will result in improvement of punctuality of passenger trains and also allow for more trains to be introduced on the network.
Other dedicated freight corridors for which detailed project reports will be ready by December 2021 are Kharagpur – Vijayawada, Bhusaval – Nagpur – Kharagpur – Dhankuni, Rajkharsawan – Andal, Vijayawada – Itarsi, said the CRB.
On the coach production front, Railways plans to produce 8,675 coaches this year, higher than the 7,524 coaches produced in last fiscal.
He added that Railways is also considering having semi high-speed-corridors along the national highways on routes like Delhi- Agra- Varanasi, Varanasi- Patna- Howrah, Delhi- Jaipur- Ahmedabad, Delhi- Chandigarh- Amritsar, Mumbai - Nasik- Nagpur, Mumbai- Pune-Hyderabad, Chennai- Bengaluru- Mysore. The detailed project report for these routes will be ready by December 2021.