Indian Railway is second most widely used Railways after Japan carrying 8 billion passengers in 2010, for china it is just some 1.7 billion. Means Indian railway is being widely used and still have huge passengers. Plus the investment in Rapid System in India will attract more passengers towards Metro Trains and Monorail. Delhi Metro is highly successful.
Regarding freight side, government is not relying solely on railways, for that we constructed expressway quality Golden Quadrilateral highway and North-South East-west highway.
You mention about dedicated freighy corridor, let me add further information that Delhi-Mumbai DFC also include increasing speed to 200km/hr or 160 mi/hr for passenger traffic.
Even there is high class road, I would always prefer train for long distance journey in comparison to bus because it is cheaper, have toilets, spacious, provide bed to sleep.
Let me share with you what issues Indian transportation customers in need of a reliable, modern supply chain are facing. Here are excerpts of a 2011 Reuters' story:
Seven years ago, when India's Future Group retail giant sent shipments from Mumbai on the country's west coast to Kolkata in the north-east, the products took 10 nervous days to arrive.
"You sent the goods, and until you received them, you just prayed," said Anshuman Singh, managing director and chief executive officer of Future Supply Chains. "There was just a black hole until they finally reached the destination."
Since then, he has wrestled with shoddy roads, minimal cold storage capacity and a myriad of state regulations and taxes to cut the journey to 72 hours. That challenge is all to come for foreign retailers eyeing a slice of India's $450 billion market.
Major cities in Asia's third-largest economy are thousands of miles apart, connected by pot-holed and clogged roads or creaking railways where wagons are in short supply.
Global giants such as Wal-Mart may be eager to start selling their wares to 1.2 billion people, but a need to first tackle India's logistical headaches will likely mean they will be heavily dependent on local expertise.
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At 4 a.m. every day, hundreds of vegetable traders begin to pack the pavements of one of Mumbai's trunk roads. Hours later, milling retail customers and piles of pungent produce bring three lanes of traffic to a halt in the morning sunshine.
Mounds of potatoes lie inches from the tyres of trucks and cars trundling past, as traders dodge commuters to carry sacks of coriander and boxes of cabbages on their shoulders through clouds of exhaust fumes and the stench of ******* produce.
Around 30 percent of India's vast fruit and vegetable production goes to waste due to a traditional supply network that uses hand-pulled wooden carts more than refrigerated freight wagons and keeps fresh produce highly regionalised.
"India cannot be seen as easy," Viney Singh, managing director of Max Hypermarkets, a six-year old local supermarket chain with a licence from European retailer Spar told Reuters.
"There are some players that have been in the retail business for more than 10 years, and til date there is no hypermarket player that has made any money."
The chaos of Mumbai's Dadar market is a universe away from Future Supply Chain's chilled 125,000 square foot (11,600 sq metre) warehouse 50 km (30 miles) from the city, where fork-lifts move crates on shelves rising up to the 17 metre-high (53-foot) roof, and 150 workers feed hundreds of metres of computer-controlled conveyor belts.
"Retail is all about filling the shelves, on time, every time," said Future Supply Chain's Singh.
"In India, the technical know-how, expertise... requires a lot of learning, it is not common knowledge here."
RPT-India supply chain chaos next hurdle for global retailers | Reuters
