Railways looking for 10 more corridors

Railways are looking keen on expanding its services by doubling the freight capacity and adding new high-speed trains for which 10 corridors with a cumulative length of about 6000 Km have been identified.

The appeal has already gone aboard for Cabinets approval, which includes permission to carry out a feasibility study and a detailed project report for the 10 possible bullet train corridors. Segments on the list are Delhi-Mun=mbai, Delhi-Kolkata, Delhi-Amritsar, Patna-Kolkata, and Chennai-Bengaluru. According to the sources, these will require an investment of around Rs 10lakh crores over a period of 10years.

For now, there is one high-speed train corridor Ahmedabad-Mumbai under implementation. The major focus is on adding 17000Km to the existing 1.2lakh km rail network, which will entail an investment of over Rs 5 lakh crore. Separately, three new freight corridors have been discussed on the lines of the Delhi-Mumbai and Amritsar-Kolkata DFCs.

In its bid to decongest major junctions, the railways have also prepared a blueprint of building “rail-on-rail” flyover and bypasses at 222 location. Railway minister Piyush Goyal had recently said a road map is being prepared for this.

After eliminating all unmanned crossings, the next big step would be eliminating the 7000 manned crossings with rail overbridges and rail underbridges. All these works would require about Rs 5.7 lakh crore and the government estimates these works will generate 9.6 lakh jobs and will also push the demand for cement and steel to the tune of 21 lakh tonnes in each case.