The Indian Railways ferries various commodities and fuels in industrial, consumer, and agricultural segments across the length and breadth of India. The carrier has historically subsidised the passenger segment with income from the freight business. Consequently freight services are unable to compete with other modes of transport on both cost and speed of delivery, leading to continuous erosion of market share.
But off late the Railways has introduced new initiatives in freight segments including upgrading of existing goods sheds, attracting private capital to build multi-commodity multi-modal logistics terminals, changing container sizes, operating time-tabled freight trains, and tweaking with the freight pricing/product mix.
RORO : RORO means Roll-on/roll-off, where loaded trucks are directly carried by railway wagons to their destination. The first ever RO-RO service in India was run by Konkan Railway. Konkan Railway passes through tough terrains of India. There is NH-66 passing through same route. Truck drivers find it extremely difficult to drive loaded trucks through ghats, undulating surfaces, narrow roads and poor road and weather conditions. The KRC concept came as a refreashing cost effective breather.
Freight Corridors: This concept completely changed the dynamics in the freight segment are the new dedicated freight corridors that are expected to be completed by 2020. The Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited Public Sector Undertaking run by Ministry of Railways to undertake planning, development, and mobilisation of financial resources and construction, maintenance and operation of these Dedicated Freight Corridors DFC;
When fully implemented, the new corridors, spanning around 3300 km, could support hauling of trains up to 1.5 km in length with 32.5 ton axle-load at speeds of 100 kilometres per hour (62 mph). Also, they will free-up capacity on dense passenger routes and will allow Railways to run more passenger trains at higher speeds.