Indian Railways have taken a number of initiatives/steps to make the freight rates competitive which include, liberalized automatic freight rebate policy in empty flow directions, discount granted on loading of bagged consignment in open and flat wagons, 40% discount in freight to fly-ash traffic, station to station rate, round trip based charging for container, round trip traffic, 5% concession on haulage charge on loaded containers, 25% concession on transportation of empty containers and flat wagons, for expansion of container freight basket large number of commodities have been de-notified, etc.
In order to boost investment from industry in development of additional terminals for handling rail cargo, a new ‘Gati Shakti Multi- Modal Cargo Terminal (GCT)’ policy has been launched on 15.12.2021 and the target is to commission 100 Gati Shakti Cargo Terminals (GCTs) within the next three financial years, i.e. 2022-23, 2023-24 and 2024-25.
Ministry of Railways has schemes to attract private investment in General Purpose Wagons, Special Purpose/High Capacity wagons and Automobile carrier wagons. During 2021-22, procurement of around
150 rakes has been approved under the General Purpose Wagon Investment Scheme, Liberalized Special Freight Train Operator Scheme and Automobile Freight Train Operator Scheme.
In order to improve the share of Railways in the freight market and to make it more attractive, a number of measures have been adopted such as increasing the axle load for carrying additional traffic per wagon, use of extensive computerization in freight operations, deployment of higher capacity locomotives and higher capacity wagons, improvement in maintenance practices of wagons and locomotives, improvement in track and signaling, training of staff and officers to adopt new technology and management practices, etc. Besides, Remote Diagnostic and Predictive Maintenance, based on artificial intelligence, is also being tried in Signaling.
Presently, Ministry of Railways has taken up construction of two Dedicated Freight Corridors (DFC) viz. Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC) from Ludhiana to Sonnagar (1337 km) and Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC) from Jawaharlal Nehru Port Terminal (JNPT) to Dadri (1506 km). Currently, 1110 km out of 2843 km of DFC has been completed. Further Ministry of Railways has also sanctioned for the survey/preparation of Detailed Project Report for the Dedicated Freight Corridors viz East-Coast Corridor (Kharagpur to Vijayawada – 1115 km), East-West Corridor (Palghar-Bhusawal-Nagpur- Kharagpur-Dankuni – 2163km and Rajkharsawan-Kalipahari-Andal – 195 km) and North-south Sub-corridor (Vijayawada-Nagpur-Itarsi – 975 km)
This information was given by the Minister of Railways, Communications and Electronic & Information Technology, Shri Ashwini Vaishnaw in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.