E-freight in India - Cargo Talk

Cover Story
Rail and Road Transport
transports are playing the most important
role in transporting goods and cargo
in India. In my opinion, both these sectors
are not expanding at the desired pace.
Both these sectors require continuous
expansion and maintenance of the already
created assets. I consider the condition
is not satisfactory in both the sectors,”
he said.
According to Budh Prakash, the road
and rail transport both have bottlenecks.
In case of road, there are barriers at state
boundaries and unsatisfactory conditions
of the roads, shortage of skilled staff
in maintaining and manning the road
vehicles. In case of rail transport in most
of the cases the service is not door to door.
Also rail sector is suffering due to resources
crunch and the capacity enhancement
is not satisfactory. “The Public Private
Partnership (PPP) for mobilising all
financial resources has not taken off in
the rail sector,” he viewed.
In his opinion, for making rail
transport much better, there is an urgent
need of heavy investment in capacity
enhancement and development of logistic
parks. For this purpose there is need for
more dialogue between the private sector
and the Government. PPP is the need of
hour; earlier the better.
24 CARGOTALK OCTOBER 2011
Kutch Rail’s attempt is to provide
hassle-free rail connectivity to Mundra
and Kandla Ports. The company is making
attempts to remain ahead of the demand.
Making a comparison Vineet Agarwal,
Joint MD, Transport Corporation of India,
highlighted that India has the second
largest road network in the world but
National Highways constitute only 2
per cent of the total road network in the
country. In India, roads account for 65 per
cent of the freight traffic while the railways
serve the remaining 35 per cent.
According to him, growth in road
lengths has not been commensurate with
the growth in freight and vehicle traffic
resulting in congestion and excessive
burden on the existing infrastructure.
A joint study report by TCI and IIMC,
conducted in 2009, to assess the operational
efficiencies of the National Highways for
freight transport, show that one of the
biggest impediments has been delays at
check posts and on-road, for filling in
forms required by various government
departments, checking and scrutiny of
documents and physical checking of the
vehicles, drivers and consignment by RTO
and Traffic police and collecting highway
toll and taxes.
“A unified tax system such as the GST
will enable creation of a common market
thus permitting free and unimpeded
movement of goods and services across
the country,” Agarwal feels.
On the other hand, the present rail
network is not adequate as compared
to the burgeoning rail freight business,
which leads to limited focus on the freight
business of railways. Also, there is a
shortage of wagons and rakes.
The share of railways in cargo
transportation has reduced over the years
with the spread of road network. Railways
today are unable to cope up with the traffic
growth of the growing economy.
He, however, appreciated that the
government has recognised the importance
of involving private sector in the
modernisation of the national highways
and has engaged them through concession
agreements for various projects in different
parts of the country. He also commended
the DFC project of the Government.
Agarwal is of the view that the need
of the hour is transportation corridors
and linear infrastructure facilities. With
the GST on the cards, arrangements like
Logistics Park and FTWZs, that would
be built along the corridors, would not
only help companies consolidate their
already scattered storage locations but
also improve the service level considerably,
due to reduction in custom clearance time
and better logistics connectivity.
“There is a need for the railways to
improve in terms of tonnage, net tonkilometres,
line capacity and locomotive
capacity. With high-powered fast
locomotives plying in the freight corridor
and handling of goods for loading
mechanised, onward distribution along
the corridor’s major stations is needed in
order to make it more efficient,” he added.
TCI is one of the few private
sector companies in the country to pr
ovide total integrated Multi modal
Transport Solutions. It is a logistic service
provider for rail and road and also leases
out Special trains for parcels and VPH for
specific customers.
WWW.CARGOTALK.IN