Mumbai: New land to spur work on freight line

Workers demolish vacated structures along the line’s alignment

An ambitious project to segregate passenger and freight trains, the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC), took a major leap on Tuesday with demolitions along the alignment in Ayare village near Kopar in Thane district. The project will lead to freight trains crossing the Mumbai suburban corridor on elevated rail lines.

"Officials said that of the 273 families, 105 in the village have opted for cash compensation. Site clearance has begun by dismantling the vacated structures. Work on the JN Port-Vaitarna section will now speed up. The JN Port-Vaitarna section is about 100 km long, covering Raigad, Thane and Palghar districts," a senior official said.

"We had already acquired everything in 2015. But some new guidelines came up in 2017 which led to a delay. The demolition will pave the way for faster construction and civil work in the JNPT-Vaitarna section, the southern-most tip of the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor," the official added.

Various sections of the project are expected to complete in 2022. The progress of works had been badly affected amid Covid-19's second wave and the targets of sections had to be rescheduled.

Development of two trunk corridors of the DFC has been under works, including the Eastern corridor between Sanehwal near Ludhiana to Dankuni in West Bengal and the western corridor connecting Dadri in Uttar Pradesh to Jawaharlal Nehru Port (JNPT) in Mumbai.

These two corridors are being built on priority because the existing trunk routes of Howrah-Delhi on the eastern corridor and Mumbai-Delhi on the western corridor are highly saturated, and are primarily passenger service dominated routes. But freight traffic in these sectors is also important due to the eastern coal belt of Sonnagar-Garhwa Road-Patratu area, thermal plants in the north and ports and container hubs of Maharashtra and Gujarat.

2022
Year when sections of the project are expected to complete