Railways focusing on affordable freight transportation: Minister

Indian Railways strives to provide affordable freight transportation services, for which evaluation of various alternatives for rationalisation of freight tariff is a continuous and ongoing process.

In order to ensure competitiveness, freight rates have not been revised since 2018 despite increase in input cost over the years, the Union Minister for Railways, Information & Broadcasting and Electronics & Information Technology, Mr Ashwini Vaishnaw, informed the Lok Sabha this week.

He highlighted the measures taken to increase freight loading and revenue:

* To increase the network capacity, rail network expansion has been taken up in a big way through construction of new lines, multi-tracking of existing lines and gauge conversion of existing lines.  

* Removing bottlenecks in operations by yard remodelling, construction of bypass/chord lines, rail flyovers etc.

* The construction of Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC) from Ludhiana to Sonnagar (1,337 km) and Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (WDFC) from Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JNP) to Dadri (1,506 km) is almost complete. Of the total 2,843 km, 2,741 route km (96.4%) has been commissioned and is operational.

* Procurement of wagons and locomotives: To increase freight carrying capacity, large numbers of IR wagons have been procured and locomotives have been manufactured. During 2014 to 2025, about 2 lakh wagons have been procured and more than 10,000 locomotives have been added for increasing freight loading and mobility.

* Industry participation in investment in general purpose wagons, special purpose/high-capacity wagons and automobile carrier wagons for cement, oil, steel, fly-ash, automobile etc. So far, around 240 rakes of special purpose wagons, 374 rakes of general-purpose wagons and 48 rakes of automobile wagons have been inducted.

* Under the ‘Gati Shakti Multi-Modal Cargo Terminal (GCT)’ policy so far, 118 new GCTs have been commissioned, with an estimated traffic capacity of 192 million tonnes per annum (MTPA). In addition, for improvement of freight and parcel terminals from financial year 2023-24 onwards, an amount of `14,500 crore has been allocated.

* A “Bulk Cement Terminal Policy” for setting up terminals on Railway land was launched recently as part of Railway reforms for facilitating bulk cement transportation.

* Ensuring increased availability of rakes/wagons against demand.

* Increasing the loadability for carrying additional traffic per wagon. Length of freight trains has also been increased to raise the throughput per train

* Use of Information Technology in freight operations to improve monitoring and utilisation of assets.

* Induction of higher horsepower locomotives.

* Improvement in maintenance practices of wagons and locomotives, resulting in increased availability of loco and rolling stock for traffic use.

*Improvement in track and signalling standards to carry higher volume of traffic.

* Training of staff and officers to adopt the new technology and management practices.

Because of these measures, freight loading increased from 1,233 MT in 2020-21 to 1,617 MT in 2024-25.  During 2024-25, IR transported 1,617 MT, thus becoming the second largest freight carrying railway in the world, highlighted a release.

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