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Increasing freight traffic: an uphill haul

Santanu Sanyal

CALCUTTA, Feb. 25

THE Railway Minister's plan to move additional traffic of 25 million tonnes in 2000-2001 can hope to succeed subject certain conditions.

First, the Railways must ensure generation of that much additional traffic for themselves. The Railway Minister, Ms. Mamata Banerjee, is pinning a good deal of hope on the probable buoyancy of the economy to generate the targeted volume of traffic. But t hen, the buoyancy itself will not be enough, unless the trade and industry, benefiting from the projected buoyancy, are prepared to offer more cargo for movement by rail.

This is important because, over the years, the economy has grown but the share of the Railways in the country's total freight traffic has declined. The Railway Minister intends to raise the railways' share of freight from the present 40 per cent to 50 pe r cent. But it is not clear how she proposes to do it, i.e, which are the commodities she is targeting to achieve her objective.

Next, there has to be sufficient number of wagons to move the targeted additional volume of cargo. While the wagon-builders have reasons to feel very elated over Ms. Banerjee's proposal to procure 23,000 wagons in terms of four-wheeler units (FWUs) in fi scal 2000-2001, one is not sure how much of the proposed acquisition will actually materialise through the placing of concrete orders.

For example, in the current year, the Railways had planned to acquire about 18,750 wagons, including 2,000 from their own workshops, but the orders so far placed with the wagons-builders are for about 10,000 FWUs.

It might be noted that for the purpose of freight movement, the Railways, for the past few years, have been placing more and more bogie wagons with a payload two-and-a-half times that of FWUs.

Next, even if the targeted 23,000 FWUs are really acquired during the course of the year, it is not known what will be the net addition to the Railways' wagon-holding, as a large number of wagons are required to be condemned every year.

There is another problem. The Railways hold a large number of wagons which are considered not bad enough for condemnation but not very efficient either because of their old age. After all, the efficiency of the wagons declines over the years and the old wagons, which cannot be equated with the new wagons in terms of efficiency, will not be of much help to achieve the targeted volume of traffic. The Railways have a very large holding of old wagons.

According to one estimate, the addition of 23,000 wagons might help the Railways move, at best, an additional 15 million tonnes. Which means that for the movement of the balance 10 million tonnes of the targeted additional traffic, the Railways will be r equired to depend on the existing fleet. It remains to be seen how it is proposed to improve the efficiency of the existing fleet.

Unless supporting services and infrastructure at various stations and loading/unloading points are proper, the Railways, it is feared, might not be able to achieve the targeted volume of traffic even if the required cargo support is available from the tr ade and industry and there are enough wagons to carry the cargo. In the absence of supporting facilities and proper infrastructure, the wagons will be detained at various points.

The Railways have to spread the traffic movement evenly throughout the year. A spurt in demand for wagons in certain months and lull in other months might put pressure on the system, making it difficult to achieve the target.

In this context, the Railway Minister's proposal to have joint ventures with the Andhra Pradesh Government and private firms for developing multi-modal transport services in the twin cities of Hyderabad and Secunderabad makes a lot of sense, though it is not clear as yet what shape will it take. One presumes that under the proposed multi-modal transport services, the Railways will join hands with the operators of other modes of transport. If executed efficiently and successfully, such services could rea lly help the Railways bring back part of the traffic lost to the roadways over the years.