Indian Railways eyes lucrative e-commerce space

After the fast-tracking of the high-speed Vande Bharat passenger trains, Indian Railways is eyeing lucrative e-commerce space and is also planning to make use of the identical platform to introduce high-speed freight trains.

The prototype is being in-built Chennai’s Integral Coach Factory, and the plan is to launch 25 such trains.

Each of these 16-car trains with the most velocity of 160 km per hour is evaluated to cost around Rs 60 crores, thrice greater than a standard freight practice with 45 wagons.

But the elevated velocity of those rakes – present cargo trains in India run at the 75 kmph velocity – might assist the nationwide transporter to raise its freight market share from 28% now, including that the railways have been striving at a 40% share in freight logistics by 2030.

The prototype of the newly-designed Freight Vande Bharat's – freight EMUs as referred to in Railways’ official records data – is expected to be prepared by December, following which the transporter is preparing to launch one such practice each month. All these new trains are expected to be deployed on the busiest routes of Railways, mainly to hold parcels of e-commerce companies, an enterprise that’s presently monopolised by roadways.

Although the identity hasn’t been finalised, this new collection may very well be christened Freight Metros.

As the new freight trains will run on the most lucrative routes of Railways joining the metros and other big cities in a time-tabled manner, our target will be to carry parcels of firms such as Flipkart and Amazon.

With this train, the Railways will be approximately 2.5 times quicker than road carriers, and in certain sectors, it can even compete with air cargo carriers, the officer said.

Routes linking Delhi, Kolkata, Mumbai, and Chennai carry the majority of freight site visitors of Railways presently.

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Also read: Railways invites bids for 200 Vande Bharat Trains