Indian Railways plans 4th corridor on Itarsi-Ngp, Wardha-Ballarshah routes
| Date :28-Jan-2023 |
By Sagar Mohod
To decongest the saturated network, Indian Railways is going for capacity expansion with the addition of 4th corridor on Itarsi-Nagpur and Wardha-Ballarshah routes, that lies on Grand Trunk line. The new lines are meant to enhance throughput and also, increase the speed of goods trains. As such, the Construction Organisation of Central Railway is going for survey to map out the challenges that it may encounter during the track-laying work.
A final location survey would map out the contours for the 297 km new line between Itarsi and Nagpur and 88 kms distance between Wardha to Ballarshah. Right now, the work on the 3rd line is going on either route and nearly 60 per cent work stands completed. But same is of little use and until entire line is not through, operations cannot rely on the same for pushing additional trains.
The new line would ensure a dedicated freight corridor enabling speeding up of goods trains for following the time-tabled run on entire Grand Trunk route. Right now, on an average, the goods trains travel at 10 km/hr that, Railway officials say, need improvement to ensure faster turn around time for wagons and increase the goods loading as it is the bread and butter for the Railways.
According to experts, the push for fourth corridor is in line with current vision of Railway Board wherein instead of being reactionary (acting after train traffic comes to saturation point), they are now keen on taking effective steps ahead of demand. The thinking came into play and for most of 80s and 90s, the investment in expanding existing network was minimal and as a result, the utilisation of tracks is now upto 150 per cent on most of the routes.
Railways is the loser as it is not able to leverage its spread and presence in every part of the country due to lack of space on tracks to push more trains. One more reason for slow pace of expansion of railway network was its dependency totally on budgetary resources. Now, post tapping market for funds, especially tying up with Life Insurance Corporation (LIC) to seek extra budgetary resources (EBR) now has given more financing capability for the Railway Board to go for aggressive expansion on routes that are identified as having good potential for returns on the investment.
As per current scenario, the Itarsi-Nagpur section’s current utilisation stands at 151 per cent in UP direction and 154 per cent on the DN direction, while on the Ballarshah-Wardha section on the UP route, it is 145 per cent and on DN, it stands at 163 per cent. The division authorities here feel that post commissioning of 3rd line, the train traffic might further increase by nearly 20 per cent. The reason for 4th line is being felt as private players are increasing opening sidings on either of the route. For within next few years, many more sidings are coming up alongside the two routes and based on the inputs, the Railway officials felt that even 3rd line would soon hit its capacity.
The planning for 4th line thus is being undertaken in advance given the long gestation period for rolling out the infrastructure as the thinking is by the time it is commissioned, the train traffic would have grown phenomenally. So, if the corridor is in place, then congestion as the one being witnessed today would not occur and Railways can comfortably keep focus on increasing its loading. So for the 4th corridor, the Railways is seeking aerial LiDAR survey along with complete drawing and analysis of soil samples. The survey would provide an idea of the magnitude of work that is on hand, the land availability, the infringement and status of land along the proposed alignment, etc.