“From Howrah to Chennai, we will ultimately have a complete quadrupled, four-line route,” Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said after the Union Cabinet met on Wednesday. Four of the five projects it cleared are rail lines. The fifth is a highway in Bihar. Together they cost Rs 13,041 crore.
Vaishnaw said the extra track would let the railways run many more trains, ease cargo movement and make maintenance simpler.
Howrah-Chennai corridor
Three of the rail projects sit on the Howrah-Chennai High Density Network, which carries long-distance passengers and freight between eastern and southern India.
The biggest is a fourth line on the 173-km Kharagpur-Bhadrak section, at Rs 3,352 crore with a four-year completion period. It runs through Paschim Medinipur in West Bengal and Balasore and Bhadrak in Odisha, and takes traffic from coal and iron-ore areas. Plans include a 564-metre bridge over the Subarnarekha river. The line is meant to strengthen freight links between steel hubs such as Jakhapura, Tatanagar and Durgapur and the ports of Paradip and Dhamra.
A fourth line on the 75-km Bhadrak-Haridaspur section will cost Rs 1,583 crore, also over four years. The existing line there runs at around 91% utilisation. Two large bridges are planned over the Baitarani and Brahmani rivers, at 686 and 1,325 metres. The project is expected to add 29 million tonnes of annual freight capacity and save Rs 433 crore a year in logistics costs.
The third and fourth lines on the 90-km Gummidipundi-Gudur section will cost Rs 2,229 crore and take four years. The section, now a double line, covers Tiruvallur district in Tamil Nadu and Tirupati district in Andhra Pradesh. Line capacity use there is expected to reach 131%. The work will add 21.24 million tonnes of annual freight capacity.
Cuttack-Paradeep
The fourth rail project is separate from the Howrah-Chennai programme. It adds third and fourth lines on the 72-km Cuttack-Paradeep section for Rs 2,286 crore, covering Cuttack and Jagatsinghpur districts in Odisha. The existing section runs at up to 101% of capacity, a figure projected to climb to 177% as ports and industry expand. The new lines are expected to carry an extra 12 million tonnes of freight a year.
The four rail projects have a combined outlay of Rs 9,450 crore.
Bihar highway
The Rs 3,591 crore road project is an 83-km four-lane brownfield corridor from Muzaffarpur through Sitamarhi to Sonbarsa, up to the Nepal border, under the hybrid annuity model. Construction is set for 30 months. It includes a 340-metre bridge over the Bagmati river, and travel time between Muzaffarpur and Sonbarsa is expected to fall from about two hours to one.
“The first four projects are railway projects, while the fifth is a highway project,” Vaishnaw said. Prime Minister Narendra Modi chaired the Cabinet.
