Study rebuts rlys' claim

The recent claims of the railways about gaining a larger pie of the country's freight traffic from the road transport sector has been countered by a recent study which points out that the share of the freight moved by the road transport sector has grown by 2 per cent to 77.54 per cent.

According to a survey by the Indian Foundation of Transport Research and Training (IFTRT) the volume of goods handled by the road transport sector has also grown by 53.1 per cent in the last five years.

In comparison, the freight traffic by the railways has grown only by 30.6 per cent in the same period. Road transport has been able to out perform the railways even as the cost of transporting goods through road transport has grown around 66 per cent in the last five years. The freight charges of the railways in the same period have grown only by 8 to 10 per cent.

According to the study, in the same period road transport sector added a fleet of 10.60 million goods carriages, leading to 822 million tonne capacity additions, while the railway has increased it capacity by 8 to 10 per cent in the past five years.

"Road transport has made an outstanding growth of over 48.32 per cent in last five years moving 2,304.32 tonne of cargo in 2005-06 from 1,553.60 tonne 2001-02. Railway has also made a healthy growth of over 35.51 per cent in cargo to 667.39 tonne from 492.50 tonne in the same period. The sector-wise growth for road transport growth has been around 23 per cent in 2005-06, while railways has grown by 6.66 percent only," IFTRT Coordinator S P Singh said.

According to the study, in the same period road transport sector added a fleet of 10.60 million goods carriages, leading to 822 million tonne capacity additions, while the railway has increased it capacity by 8 to 10 per cent in the past five years.

There has been steady growth for the road transport for the first quarter of current fiscal also. The haulage by road transport sector increased by 11.10 per cent to 638.4 million tonne from 574.50 million tonnes. And in this period over 72,000 goods carriages were also added.

Meanwhile, the railways haulage moved up by 9.91 percent to 175.84 million tonnes from 158.26 million tonnes.

The survey also points out that road transport has an astounding share of 85 per cent in the general retail parcel cargo as against 15 per cent of railway.

Railway has shown improvement in its share for high density cargo like cement and iron ore in last six months.