- InduQin
Ideas To Transform India: 1.0 Dedicated Freight Corridor.
Every conscious person in India would know that India is building a Dedicated Freight Corridors(DFC). The first one is under construction in the western part of India. This post does not talk about that corridor. Instead, here I try to present a new kind of DFC, that I think would be better than the current one. It has come out from my imagination; hence it would be different than the real one.
Note: I do not have the data to get the perfect number, so I have used very aggressive generalization and approximation.
The one I imagine is similar to the current one in the regard that they both are a form of the railway system and use a railway track. My proposed plan is to make automated smart carriages, that when once programmed to go a place, carry the load to that place without a driver. The central idea here is to change the usual shipment that conventional freight train transfers to the system, which transmits all kinds of freight. Trucks are better for the short distance and bad for the long run because of their high cost, but still, in India, trucks are used for long-distance(usually for more then 300 km).
Track: The tracks would be 100% electrified and couple with a high tech control system. The route is going to cover the whole country, connecting every Sea Ports, big cities, and industrial hubs. The track would be interconnected, providing connectivity to every part of India. On these tracks, the carriages are going to run alone like trucks, but when thousands of carriages go on the single lane, then their relative speed should be zero, so they would not collapse on one another. The problem here is that these carriages would carry all kinds of material, some heavy and other light. High speed is not optimal for heavy freight. Hence, they are going to slow down the whole system. So the track that can support a maximum pace of 130 kmph and carriage speed of 75 kmph would be preferable. One big problem with a single carriage freight train would be the changing of the track to put the carriage on the right path. An automated electric system would be preferable. The carriages would come in the variable time interval that would lead to malfunction, so having a safety track parallel to the main lane near the junction would provide more chances to put the carriage on the right one.