In an effort to make railways more freight-friendly, the railway ministry has decided to set up dedicated freight corridors. The dedicated freight corridor (DFC) is a project for laying new railway lines exclusively for carrying freight, isolated from normal Indian Railways traffic and passenger trains.

Conceived in 2004-2005, the planning for DFC began in 2006, and initial proposals have been drawn up in 2007. The entire DFC project will include 2,700 km or so of exclusive freight lines (new construction), and about 5,000 km of feeder lines that will include some new construction and many existing lines that will be upgraded.

In the first phase, the Western Corridor will connect the Jawaharlal Nehru Port to New Delhi via Vadodara, Ahmedabad, Palanpur, Jaipur, and Rewari and further on to Tughlakabad and Dadri. There will also be a link between Dadri and Khurja, and feeder routes connecting other ports of Gujarat. There will also be four logistic terminals, one each near New Delhi, Jaipur, Ahemdabad, and Vadodara. The Western Corridor is expected to carry mainly container traffic. The Western Corridor is expected to be unelectrified, using diesel traction.

The Eastern Corridor is expected to connect Ludhiana to Sonnagar via Ambala, Saharanpur, Khurja, Shahjahanpur, Lucknow, Allahabad, and Mughalsarai. The primary feeder routes for this will be from Sonnagar to Durgapur via Gomoh, Sonnagar to Tatanagar via Garhwa Road, and Barkakana to Bokaro via Chandrapura. Eventually the Eastern Corridor will be extended to Dankuni, near Kolkata, where there will be a new freight terminal, and to a new (to be built) deep-water port off the coast of West Bengal near Kolkata, with a total length of 1,805km.

The Eastern corridor will be single line on the Ludhiana-Khurja portion (426km) and double line on the remaining portions. The Eastern Corridor is expected to carry more heavy mineral traffic and less container traffic. The Eastern Corridor is expected to be electrified. Work on the Eastern Corridor was inaugurated on February 10, 2009, with construction commencing on a 105-km section between New Ganjkhwaja near Mughalsarai and New Karwandia near Sonnagar.

It is expected that trains running on the DFC lines will be up to 1.5 km-long (100 wagon rakes) and running at up to 100 km/h. Double-stacking of containers is expected to be the rule, especially on the Western Corridor which will be unelectrified. Transit time for freight between Mumbai and New Delhi is expected to drop to about 36 hours from the current 60 hours. In the busiest freight routes such as Ahmedabad-Marwar, the number of freight trains running is expected to rise from 15 each way each day (currently) to 72 each way; between JNP and Vadodara, the increase will be from 9 to 49. Expected completion time for the first phase of the DFC project (the routes described above) is around 5-7 years. However, the cost has now increased to nearly Rs 73,000 crore, according to officials of Dedicated Freight Corridor of India (DFCCIL).

DFCCIL is a special purpose vehicle (SPV) created by the Railways to develop the corridor by financial year 2016-17. ?The total cost of the project, excluding cost of land, is estimated at Rs 68,000 crore. The land would cost another Rs 5,000 crore,? a senior official of DFCCIL said. RITES is the agency carrying out the initial feasibility studies for the project.

However, there has been huge cost escalation of the freight corridors since its inception. In fact the Plan panel fears that the cost would go up to Rs 1 lakh crore by the time it is completed in 2016. Since this is not taken into account in the current financing plans, the Plan panel has asked Indian Railways to draw up a fresh funding plan.

The cost of constructing the two stretches of the dedicated freight corridor?the eastern one running from Ludhiana to Dankuni and the western one from Navi Mumbai port to Tughlakhabad was initially estimated at

Rs 28,000 crore, but has gone up over the years, and as per the ministry?s current estimates, the corridor will cost Rs 49,624 crore and may well go up to Rs 60,000 crore by the time it is complete.