Kolkata, March 24, 2023 :
Shri N. Srinivas, IRTS Officer (1989) in a presentation at Eastern Railway headquarters conveyed several benefits of Dedicated Freight Corridor. DFC will be a game changer in transport logistics of the country with the multi-dimensional benefits derived from it like –
•Energy efficient and environment friendly transport which will save 457 Million Tonnes of Co2 emission over 30 years.
•Quantum jump in transportation capacity and faster transit to & from major ports and industrial hubs.
•Released capacity on IR is available for augmentation and speeding up passenger services.
In Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor (EDFC), four sections namely Khurja – Bhaupur (351 km), Bhimsen – Chunar (327 km), Pt Deen Dayal Upadhyay Jn – Sonnagar (137) & Khurja – Dadri (46 km) – a total of 861 km have been commissioned so far.
There has been a great impact of DFC as loading organizations like CONCOR and other big cement houses are expected to execute more loading. Initiatives like installation of Solar Photovoltaic Panels on vacant land pockets along DFC tracks and others are being taken.
The business development plan through DFC envisages many other strategies like Development of small cargo business and attracting unconventional freight traffic including modal shift from road to rail through innovative products using RO-RO/ToT model. Besides, DFC has advantages of unused line capacity, high speed and lower operating cost.
The USP of DFC for increasing the freight business are capacity, speed & quality of service. IT packaging, first mile/last mile service, aggregation of e-commerce firms, business generation by incentives and encouraging local merchants for aggregating local produce for rail dispatches from nearby DFCCIL stations are aimed to bring revenue even from non-conventional streams. Besides, non-fare revenues from advertisement rights at Flyovers, RoBs, RuBs, station buildings/structures and Dark Fibre Monetisation have come into existence. There has been renewable energy development in the Land bank & building roofs also.
Besides, the DFC is also using Dedicated Freight Information System (DFIS) which is an in-house developed information system. This application has several models and key performance indicators over WDFC and EDFC monitored through DFIS. The DFIS have the facilities for Live train running details, Digital daily MIS reports, Paperless station management, unusual incidents reporting and impact analysis, Digitalization of important Forms & Authorities, Cadre Management (PME and training details), Business Development Data, analysis and planning & Details of private sidings, Business Development Reports, Loading/Unloading reports and analysis & other important links and works.
DFIS can access actual Freight train running from COA application of IR (through API) and on basis of algorithm embedded in DFIS the Paths of freight train shall be predicted. on basis of expected arrival time at Crew changing point, crew arrangement shall be triggered by DFIS in CMS. Similarly unusual related with railway assets such as loco, wagon, crew etc shall be pushed into ICMS for proper monitoring of asset performance.
