In the high-speed train project, physical work has not yet started, said the chairman of the railway commission.
New Delhi:
The two major rail projects – the dedicated freight corridor and the high-speed train project – aimed at modal shift of rail operations in the country will not be delayed despite the coronavirus crisis, announced today chairman of the railway commission, VK Yadav.
His statement comes at a time when most infrastructure projects in the country are facing delays due to foreclosure, coupled with labor shortages and the economic crisis.
The dedicated 81,000 crore rupee freight corridor, which is the largest railway development project currently underway, includes the DFC Oriental, a 1,839 km freight line from Ludhiana to Punjab to Dankuni near Calcutta , in West Bengal, and the 1483- km WDFC or west corridor connecting Delhi, the capital of India, and its economic center Mumbai.
According to the latest data provided by DFCCIL on Wednesday, the agency has completed 56% of its contractual work on WDFC and 60% on EDFC.
The agency said 99% of the land required had been acquired. The completion of the project, scheduled for December 2021, is expected to decongest the rail network by moving approximately 70% of the freight trains to these corridors.
“It was a very good decision on the part of the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL) to keep its workers in the camps around the site and provide them with basic equipment, thus ensuring that few That way, the work has not stopped, has only slowed down a bit, and since we still have time until December 2021 (the deadline), I expect us to let us not be delayed, “said Yadav.
According to the DFCCIL, they had around 40,000 workers on their job sites in Uttar Pradesh and Maharashtra, which was mainly reduced to around 15,000 workers during the lockout, which resulted in a slowdown in their work. Its director general has written to the states asking them to ensure that workers are allowed to move from camps to construction sites, even by arranging electronic passes for them. The agency also hired locals to supplement the workers available with them.
DFCCIL is now also facilitating the return of workers to the site on trains and buses, and in the past month has brought in around 7,000 highly skilled workers from Bihar, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. The latest count, according to the authorities, is around 22,000 workers in DFC units.
The completion of the DFC and the resulting decongestion of the rail network are also essential for the start-up of 151 private train services in April 2023.
“By the time the private trains start operating, we would have finished all of our infrastructure work. We are doing a lot of dubbing and tripling infrastructure work that would solve the congestion problems that these trains could face”, a- he said when asked about congestion on national roads.
The other long-awaited project – the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed corridor – which has a deadline of December 2023, has faced problems ranging from protests by landowners and rising project costs due to the widening gap between the Indian rupee and the Japanese yen, as 80% of the 1,000 billion rupees needed to finance the project will come from a 20-year loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica). The project is implemented by the National High-Speed Rail Corporation (NHSRCL).
The agency that provided the latest project status report to PTI said it had launched 68% of its civil engineering tenders covering 345 km by 508 km as well as a separate offer for the manufacturing of 28 steel bridges for the Maharashtra high-speed corridor.
While the joint survey to measure the land required for the project is almost nearing completion, the agency has acquired 60% of the land needed for the project (around 77% of land in Gujarat, 80% in Dadar Nagar Haveli and 22% in Maharashtra), according to the NHSRCL.
“In the high-speed train project, however, the physical work has yet to start. However, the tendering process is underway and the acquisition of land is underway,” said Yadav.
A pre-bid meeting to resolve the bidders issue was also held during the lockout period by videoconference. Yadav said that although railways revenues from passenger traffic have been affected due to the pandemic, cargo loading will increase revenues by the end of the year.
“Because passenger trains are disconnected from the network, there are many tracks available for freight trains. This year, freight traffic will be 50% higher than in previous years, thus improving railways’ revenues despite the pandemic. and even now we are working on our infrastructure to make sure we remove the bottlenecks. We took this opportunity to finish 200 of our pending work and took the opportunity for multiple follow-up, doubling, “he said.
