The Indian Railways' quadrilateral linking the four metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Howrah, commonly known as the Golden Quadrilateral; and its two diagonals (Delhi-Chennai and Mumbai-Howrah), adding up to a total route length of 10,122 km carries more than 55% of revenue earning freight traffic of IR. The existing trunk routes of HowrahDelhi on the Eastern Corridor and Mumbai-Delhi on the Western Corridor are highly saturated, with line capacity utilization varying between 115-150 per cent.

The surging power needs requiring heavy coal movement, booming infrastructure construction and growing international trade has led to the conception of the Dedicated Freight Corridors.

The Sanctioned Dedicated Freight Corridors are:

• Western Dedicated Freight Corridor, (Dadri, U.P to Jawaharlal Nehru Port, Mumbai— 1,468 km) (WDFC)
• Eastern Dedicated Freight Corridor, (Ludhiana Punjab to Dankuni West Bengal— 1,760 km) (EDFC)

Being executed by the Dedicated Freight Corridor Corporation of India Limited (DFCCIL), a Special Purpose Vehicle set up under the Ministry of Railways in 2006, the two dedicated freight corridors will provide relief to the railways’ heavily congested Golden Quadrilateral along the western and eastern rail routes, and facilitate fresh industrial activity and multi-modal value-addition services hubs along the corridors.

It is proposed to take up three freight corridors - North-South connecting Delhi to Chennai, East-West connecting Kharagpur to Mumbai & East Coast connecting Kharagpur to Vijayawada - on high priority to ensure structuring, award and implementation in a time-bound manner through innovative financing mechanisms including PPP.

The diversion of freight to DFCs on trunk routes will free up the existing network for the kind of capacity expansion needed for passenger movement.
The commissioning of the WDFC and EDFC projects, spanning over 3360 route kms, will not only help the railways regain its market share of freight transport but bring about fundamental changes by reduction in unit cost of transportation, smaller organization and management cost, with higher efficiency and lower energy consumption. In the execution of the two dedicated freight corridors, the DFCCIL aims to follow a low carbon path, adopting various technological options which can help them to operate with greater energy efficiency.