Aiming to increase loadings significantly, the railways has embarked upon a series of steps like running goods trains on a fixed time table and formulating coastal shipping policy as part of reform measures in freight business.
The railways witnessed a dismal growth of one per cent freight with 1101.76 million tonnes loadings in the 2015-16 as against 1094.61 MT in the 2014-15 fiscal.
"We have identified certain routes to run freight trains on a fixed time table. It will be on a pilot basis in May-June this year," Railway Board Member (Traffic) Mohd Jamshed said.
Currently freight service is being run without any time table. Once the time table is prepared, freight trains are expected to reach their destinations within a specified time helping the market in knowing delivery schedules.
Jamshed said initially time table will be for container and parcel service on selected routes.
Delhi-Mumbai and Jaipur-Ahmedabad-Pipav Port corridors are the routes being considered for running container trains based on a time table.
Besides, the public transporter will run parcel trains on on a time table on Delhi-Howrah-Guwahati routes and is also exploring transporting coal on time-tabled freight trains on the Delhi-Mughalsarai route.
As far as coastal shipping policy is concerned, Jamshed said, "We did not have any such policy earlier and after operationalising the policy it has helped increase loadings."
The railways has embarked on significant reforms in its freight policy in order to boost the loadings in the current fiscal.
"While the 10 per cent port congestion surcharge has been removed, tariff for the 'merry-go-round' scheme has also been reduced," Jamshed said, adding, "The Singareni Collieries has committed to transport an additional 3-4 MT of additional traffic for the scheme."
The national transporter has pegged its freight loading to grow by 4.5 per cent to 1,157 million tonnes in FY17, and is expecting its freight revenue to grow by 5.4 per cent.
