The western dedicated freight corridor reached Jawaharlal Nehru Port on Tuesday after Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a key section of the route, marking the completion of the link connecting northern India with the western coast, Maharashtra Chief Minister Devendra Fadnavis said.
The inauguration took place at JNPT, where freight trains on the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor were flagged off in the presence of Fadnavis, Deputy Chief Ministers Eknath Shinde and Sunetra Pawar, Raigad district guardian minister Bharat Gogawale and MLA Aditi Tatkare.
Fadnavis said Maharashtra had invested about Rs 10,000 crore in the state’s 178-kilometre stretch of the corridor. The approximately 1,500-kilometre freight route passes through Maharashtra, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Haryana and Uttar Pradesh, linking industrial and agricultural regions in northern India with ports on the western coast.
The New Umbergaon-JNPT section was described as the most challenging part of the project. According to the chief minister, construction teams had to work through marshland, hill ranges and difficult terrain around the Vaitarna and Ulhas rivers. The work included the use of marine-clay embankments, tunnels, bridges and flyovers to complete what officials described as a missing link in the freight network.
The route has been built to carry double-stack container trains, which will run on the corridor for the first time in the country, according to the statements cited in the report. Four tunnels, along with hundreds of bridges and flyovers, were constructed as part of the section. At Kalamboli, engineers installed a 110-metre-long flyover girder weighing about 1,500 tonnes without stopping ongoing railway operations, Fadnavis said.
The corridor is expected to strengthen freight connectivity to JNPT and support the expansion of Maharashtra’s port-linked logistics network. Fadnavis said JNPT handles about 55 percent of India’s total container traffic. The port handled 3.827 million twenty-foot equivalent units between April and August, an increase of 15 percent, according to figures cited by the chief minister.
Fadnavis also said JNPT’s capacity is expected to exceed 10 million TEUs by 2029-30. He linked the freight corridor’s operation with the planned growth of JNPT and the development of Vadhvan Port, which he said would be three times larger than JNPT.
The chief minister further claimed that India’s logistics costs had declined from 14 percent to about 10 percent and said the target was to bring them below 7 percent once the Western Dedicated Freight Corridor operates at full capacity. The report did not provide details on the basis or measurement method for those figures.
The inauguration adds the JNPT connection to the freight corridor network. Further operational milestones, including the pace at which the route reaches full capacity and its effect on port-linked cargo movement, will determine the corridor’s immediate impact on Maharashtra’s logistics system.
