Delhi-Mumbai Dedicated Freight Corridor
Summary
The study is based on the basis that large infrastructure projects, like the proposed Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC), are essential drivers of the state economy and have significant implications for attaining low-carbon expansion goals. The intention of the study is based on whether the DFC project would concurrently support sustainable development, reduce freight traffic, and decrease carbon releases. For that reason, it would be a worthy project supporting development policies and climate change strategies at the end. Also, other massive infrastructure of this kind could formulate a strategy background for attaining the aims of low-carbon transportation and sustainable development, which as a result could create the foundation of low-carbon society. This is an empirical study that can help determine the essential relations of this background (Cooper, 2010).
A Brief of Proposed Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC)
According to Kennard (2011) studies, there is augmentation recognition among legislators in India that transport infrastructure may become a critical bottleneck for future economic development. This is especially the situation of freight transport as rapid growth in freight traffic is estimated to progress in the medium and long-term. The concept of constructing the railway passageways mainly for freights mobility was apprehended in year 2005 It was declared by a multiparty contribution via Indian Administration together with Japanese Administration. Following the study of its feasibility and the required mandatory approval, the Railway Department formed the Dedicated Freights Corridors Company of India Ltd (DFCCIL) (Wei, 2011).
The long-standing strategic proposal of the Railway Department is to build six high capacity ad high-speed corridors across the Golden Quadrilateral and its diagonals (Rhodes, 2013). During phase 1, two corridors having a total of 3347 kilometers are already approved. The Eastern DFC, having a route length of 1800 kilometers, would link Ludhiana to Dankuni. Delhi–Mumbai corridor construction that is the theme of this research will henceforth be referred as the Western DFC. Western DFC may link Dadri to Jawaharlal Port neighboring the Mumbai, characterizing a track dimension of 1500 kilometers (Agarwalla & Raghuram, 2012).
In the feature, four additional DFCs will be constructed; these include East Coast Corridor (1100 km), East-West Corridor (2000 km), Southern Corridor (890 km) and North-South Corridor (2173 km) (Gopalan, 2013). The planned DFCs are demonstrated in figure 1 below.
Figure 1: Proposed DFCs in India (Wei, 2011, p. 136).
Rationales of Delhi-Mumbai Devoted Freights Corridors (DDFC)
Objectives and the Scope of DFC Project
The Western DFC is one of the major strategic to strengthen the India’s rail transport infrastructures for freight mobility (Noyes, 2014). DFC was considered against circumstantial of an anticipated evolution of an extraordinary future needs for the freight transportation within this locality and requirement to link ports in Maharashtra and Gujarat with manufacturer centers alongside the Western passageway. The DFCCIL, which was supervised by the Railways Department, was integrated during 2006. It was tasked with designing plans, maintenance, erection, and running the DFC (Agarwalla et al., 2012).
The responsibility of the company:
Construct railway infrastructure by employing suitable technologies which can allow the government to reclaim, and improve marketplace share on its freight services through developing extra aptitude and ensuring an effectual, dependable, economical and safety alternatives for distributing products to consumers (Wang, 2011).
Supporting the initiatives of the regime toward environmental sustaining through motivating clienteles to embrace railway transport as the most environmentally sustainable medium for their freight locomotive needs (Noyes, 2014).
The DFCCIL indicated numerous primary objectives of launching DFC:
Build rail infrastructure to carry out massive throughput for every train.
Minimize overall transportation cost.
Provide Indian Railway clients guaranteed fast transit at economic traffic.
Enhance general transportation efficiency of the national rail system.
Expand Indian Railway's share of the freight market.
Consistent with corporation’s obligation, DFC is expected to be a balancing but should not be not competitive infrastructure to the other railways because multiple traffics will terminate and then originate on the DFC Network (Rhodes, 2013). The exact train operation encompassing the delivery of drive will be conferred in the Indian infrastructure and thus, DDFCCIL may offer non-discriminatory use of freight own by Indian Railways and other eligible operators. Consequently, the DFCCIL has implemented a Carbon Policy, Corporate Social Responsibility Policy and an Environmental Policy. These policies have consequences regarding widening the scope of any future DFC project (Cooper, 2010).
The core characteristics of these policies include:
Corporate Social Role Policies
Enhance a better life of employees and families in addition to citizens and society in general (Pawar & Veer, 2012).
Integrate ethical, social and environmental issues into the organization’s business processes.
Corporate Environmental Policy
Integrate ecological management and practices.
Mitigate measures for waste, noise and vibration pollution.
Adopt efficient use of energy resources.
Intrinsic upgrading in energy efficiency by adopting value-added technology
Involve in direct activities toward environmental improvement by conserving water resources and developing green belt (Uzun, 2012).
Make the effort for the conservation of heritage and ecological balance.
Carbon Policy
Moving freight transport from the road medium to negligible-carbon intensive transportation.
Adopting different hi-tech options that could facilitate the DFCs work in an energetic manner while discovering alternatives to counterbalance GHG discharges through utlizing low-carbon resources (Kennard, 2011).
Financing and Operational Method
Western DFC project expenses
The overall project accomplishment cost of the ongoing DFC is approximated as Rs. 384900 million as per 2009-10 estimates (Garben, 2011). This does not incorporate the estimate of rolling stock and the land. The land for building Western DFC will be obtained by the Indian government and rent out to DFCCIL. Nonetheless, in the commerce design of DFCCIL, the prize of land is not yet incorporated in the calculation of the monetary return rate and project cost. Table 1 one presents the outline of the Western DFC infrastructure and the planned source of funding (Noyes, 2014).
It is supposed that the DFC project will be finalized by 2017-18 and funded with loans from Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) and the World Bank, as well as equity input from Indian Railway Department. World Bank loan will cover an interest rate of Labor plus 0.38% outstanding for each six months while JICA will regard 7% loan in perpetuity without principal refund. Indian Railway will offer parity to merge the deficit between DFC project cost (except cost for land) and loans from JICA and World Bank (Pawar et al., 2012).
Feasibility Studies
Revenue Projections
The role of DFCCIL is like that of the infrastructure supplier for the Indian Railways. They can operate trains along the DFC routes (Garben, 2011). The source of revenue for DFCCIL will originate from the Track Access Charge (TAC) and the user charge paid by the Indian Railways to compensate the services rendered. Currently, no other operator is permitted to carry out train services on the corridor though this could be allowed in the future. The association between the two parties will be overseen by a concession contract for 30-years ending in 2048 (Cooper, 2010).
Business Plan of DFCCIL proposed a two-phase tariff for calculating TAC, a fixed element payable regardless of the traffic volume plus a capricious element centered on gross tons per kilometer (GTKM) shifted. Consequently, capital cost (cost of debt plus depreciation) is considered as fixed cost, whereas traction cost is completely variable. Other O&M (overheads, staff, and materials) are partially fixed and partially variable (Upadhyay & Bolia, 2014). The revenue estimates of Western DFC are briefed in Table 2 below:
The revenue projections above illustrate that in case the project is custom-made, the fixed element of TAC could be 70% in comparison with 30% variable element. With time, the capricious element would increase whereas the fixed element would reduce (Gopalan, 2013). Further, rooted in the traffic prognostications for the DFC, and TAC for each NTKM is approximated to be Rs. 0.19 during 2018, which rises to Rs. 0.531 during 2048. The Railways charged about Rs. 1.0 for each NTKM for merchandise traffic in the year 2009. Although the TAC is an element of overall transportation cost, it will be secure to summarize from these numerals that DFC would be most possibly decrease its cost of operation for the Railways (Upadhyay et al., 2014).
The Western DFC project Financial Rate Return is approximated to be 4.83% if the operations begin in 2017. There is a proposal that TAC need be reviewed every 3-years, as well as Indian Railways traffic policies, to make sure that DFCCIL neither suffer losses nor make abnormal profits (Kennard, 2011).
Critical Evaluation and Impact to the City and Regional Transportation
It is apparent that there will be a sizable escalation in travel need triggered by the economic growth within the locality (Rhodes, 2013). The Perspective Plan for the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor (DMIC) predicts the unmatched increase in the populace, high internal migration, increased volume of road traffic, and tremendous pressures on transport infrastructure by a factor of 2 to 7, in various regions. Bearing in mind logistics and the industrial infrastructure planned for the DMIC, a future evolution of freight from the road to railway is anticipated. Nonetheless, presently, the 19 feeder routes and other two key rail routes are currently congested. Hence, timely completion of this project is mandatory to achieve the infinite potential of DMIC strategy (Gopalan, 2013).
The Perspective Plan of DMIC undertakes timely completion and management of DFC plus the ongoing development of DMIC strategy. It projects two main traffic jams to maximize the DMCI strategy potential, carrying capacity limits of the DFC and handling capacity limits at regional ports. The analysis in Perspective Plan demonstrates that the ports in Maharashtra and Gujarat would have the capability to handle the estimated freight traffic only until 2027-28. Also, the Western DFC would be able to handle containerized cargo up to 2027-28 in case the economic activities in the DMIC locality grow its potential (Uzun, 2012).
Consequently, it may be summarized that capacity of ports on the west coast should be substantially increased, and some fresh ports will necessitate to be established. Equally, DFCCIL will have to be transform the double mass of the container train along with other operate joined trains on the DFC at the end of 2027-28. Presently, there are three primary ports with the region, Kandla Port in Gujarat, and Mumbai Port and J.N. in Maharashtra equipped to take care of containerized traffic. As well, there are 5-minor ports (Hazira, Mundra, Dighi, Rewas and Pipavav) with container handling capacity. The capacity would have to be augmented at least up to times by 2039-2040 to meet the demands of the estimated traffic. Furthermore, the new capacity will need to be developed in some tiny ports. Taking these essentials into consideration, DMIC proposed a determined plan for infrastructure throughout this area.
DMIC area has existing railways routes of over 35,000 km together with road network (expressways and freeways) of over 6000 km. The Western DFC is estimated to not only offer supplementary capacity for freight mobility but also trigger a modal change from road to rail. The proposed transportation infrastructure would provide vital rail and road connections to airports, ports and the DFC. The transport network would similarly aid the distribution of goods from manufacturing nodes to neighborhoods. DMIC would contribute to the most efficient usages of DFC by offering freight traffic to any direction. Thus, a challenge for the central and the local administrations is building integrated transport which is sustainable to the environment along with low-carbon (Garben, 2011).
References
Agarwalla, S. K., & Raghuram, G. (2012). Structuring the Dedicated Freight Corridor Project at a lost opportunity.
Cooper, P. Q. (2010). Dedicated railway freight corridor, 30 June 2005, New Delhi. New Delhi: Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry of India.
Garben, M. (2011). Strategies to Rid the Environment of Pollution via Inner-City Freight Transport — Case Studies in Cologne And Gelsenkirchen. Studies in Environmental Science Freight Transport and the Environment, 301-311. Retrieved March 29, 2016.
Gopalan, R. (2013). Factors influencing the design of a linear rail network for a dedicated freight corridor. International Journal of Logistics Systems and Management IJLSM, 14(1), 73. Retrieved March 29, 2016.
Kennard, D. (2011). A methodology to evaluate the feasibility for light rail transit in a small to medium density environment via geographic information systems and image interpretation.
Noyes, V. R. (2014). The feasibility study on the development of dedicated freight corridor for Delhi-Mumbai and Ludhiana-Sonnagar in India: Final report. Tokyo: Japan International Cooperation Agency.
Pawar, P., & Veer, N. (2012). Vibrant North-West India: The SWOT Analysis of Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor. SSRN Electronic Journal SSRN Journal. Retrieved March 29, 2016.
Rhodes, P. B. (2013). The feasibility study on the development of dedicated freight corridor for Delhi-Mumbai and Ludhiana-Sonnagar in India: Final report. Tokyo: Japan International Cooperation Agency.
Upadhyay, A., & Bolia, N. (2014). Combined loaded train is scheduling for dedicated freight railway corridors. Computers & Industrial Engineering, 76, 23-31. Retrieved March 29, 2016.
Uzun, P. B. (2012, April 12). A Case Study of the Delhi-Mumbai Dedicated Freight Corridor. Retrieved March 28, 2016, from http://www.unep.org/transport/lowcarbon/Pdf's/publications/dfc_fullreport.pdf
Wang, Y. (2011). ICCTP 2009 critical issues in transportation system planning, development, and management: August 5-9, Harbin, China. Reston, VA: American Society of Civil Engineers.
Wei, H. (2011). ICCTP 2011 integrated transportation systems: Green, intelligent, reliable: Proceedings of the 10th International Conference of Chinese Transportation Professionals: August 4-8, Beijing, China. Reston, VA: American Society of Civil Engineers.
Appendixes
Appendix 1: Freight traffic mobility with rail and road (since 1950-2010)
Appendix 2: Freight traffic by mode (since 2007-08)
Appendix 3: Estimation of major products on western DFC (in million NTKM)
Appendix 4: Proposed investments within the DMIC locality
Appendix 5: Future populace and employment approximates
Appendix 6: Future estimation of freight traffic
Appendix 7: Projected yearly freight traffic (billion NTKM)
Appendix 8: Design features
Appendix 9: DFC rail lines
