Till the dedicated freight corridor is ready, Indian Railways plans to augment its capacity by heavily investing in its high density network and routing incremental investments towards creation of better goods sheds.
The high density network, which comprises rail routes along the golden quadrilateral, its diagonals and the Delhi-Guwahati route, accounts for about 28 per cent of total rail route length in the country. However, about 75 per cent of total freight traffic moves on these routes. Thus, the Ministry has decided to invest about Rs 20,000 crore over the next three to five years in strengthening the high density network.
The investment would be routed to over 100 projects that include doubling, building third lines, improving signalling and building overbridges.
Since Railways has set a target to move 1,100 million tonnes traffic per annum by the end of the Eleventh Plan, it should have created incremental capacity to handle such traffic. With the current infrastructure, Railways expects to handle about 785 mt traffic per annum — that too when it is operating at over 100 per cent capacity utilisation levels in several of the high density routes. During the last three to four years, Railways has primarily augmented capacity by increasing the carrying capacity per wagon and improving the wagon turnaround time.
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