Diversifying the freight operation, railways today opened the first auto hub at Walajabad near Chennai to attract transportation of cars from roads to rail.
"Currently 2/3 of our revenue comes from freight and 85 per cent of bulk traffic is from a few selected commodities only. This has been a traditional way for railways," Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu said here after launching the auto hub at Chennai through video conference.
Diversification of freight operation to increase loadings share of railways was part of the Railway Budget 2016-17.
Presently 4 per cent automobile traffic are transported through railways and approximately Rs 100 crore revenue has been collected during financial year 2015-16 through this transportation.
Spreading over 5000 sq meters, the auto hub is located near auto units of Oragdam, Sri Perambadur and Singa Perumal Kovil areas which are having the manufacturing facilities of Nissan, Hyundai, Ford and Daimler Chrysler.
So we have to diversify the area of operation to attract freight traffic which was not traditionally coming to railways, Prabhu said.
The auto hub near Chennai will have loading capacity of 300 vehicles.
We have to devise strategy for how to get auto transportation to railways which was mostly on roads till now, Prabhu said.
Walajabad auto hub is expected to act as an ideal distribution centre for the inward traffic of Tata, Honda, etc converging for distribution into Tamil Nadu and adjoining states including Puducherry.
The hub has seamless road connectivity to the production and consumption centres and would cater to over one million units of 4-wheeler being produced every year in the area.
