Cabinet Approves Eight Multitracking Railway Projects Worth Rs 20,804 Crore to Decongest High-Density Networks

Gist The Union Cabinet has approved eight multitracking railway projects covering 1,196 km at a cost of Rs 20,804 crore to decongest Indian Railways' severely saturated High-Density Networks HDNs . This infrastructure push primarily targets the Mumbai-Kolkata and Mumbai-Chennai corridors to enhance freight efficiency and passenger transit. For an aspirant, this development highlights the government's strategic focus on addressing logistical bottlenecks to secure domestic energy supply chains coal transit and reduce the country's overall logistics costs. Background High-Density Networks HDNs are major passenger and freight corridors on the Indian Railways network where train traffic consistently runs beyond track capacity. Indian Railways has identified seven such high-density corridors , which collectively carry approximately 40% of the country’s total rail traffic . Because line-capacity utilization on these routes frequently exceeds 100%, operations suffer from severe congestion and delays. Multitracking—the process of adding third, fourth, or double lines to existing tracks—separates slow-moving freight from faster passenger trains, increasing the overall throughput and efficiency of the network. Key Pointers Logistics Cost Reduction: By decongesting arterial routes that are currently operating well above their designed…