Railways to Quadruple Tracks on Busiest Routes

What makes a route among the busiest 16%?

Just seven corridors qualify: Delhi-Howrah, Howrah-Chennai, Chennai-Mumbai, Mumbai-Delhi, Delhi-Chennai, Mumbai-Howrah and Delhi-Guwahati. They link India's biggest cities and industrial regions, so both passenger and freight traffic pile onto them. Together they span roughly 11,000 km, just 16% of the network's total route length, yet carry about 41% of everything Indian Railways moves.

Why does adding more track help these routes specifically?

Most of this network runs on two tracks shared by passenger and freight trains, so a delay on one train backs up everything behind it. Adding two more tracks lets Railways separate freight from passenger movement, so slower goods trains no longer force faster passenger trains to wait, easing the congestion that builds up precisely because so much traffic is squeezed onto so little track.

How does this fit into other rail expansion already underway?

This isn't an isolated push. The Cabinet has separately approved doubling projects like Kasara-Manmad and Delhi-Ambala getting third and fourth lines, and India already built dedicated freight-only corridors in the east and west. The four-laning plan adds to that layered approach: dedicated freight lines plus quadrupled trunk routes, rather than one single fix for congestion.

How do they add tracks while trains keep running?

The evidence names the projects, not the construction method itself: three approved multitracking jobs, like Kasara-Manmad and Delhi-Ambala, add a 3rd and 4th line alongside the existing two, covering 389 km. Work of this kind runs beside live tracks rather than on them, which is why the story flags it as a major execution challenge needing land, engineering and traffic management.

How big and costly are the approved multitracking projects so far?

The Cabinet has approved three multitracking projects, Kasara-Manmad, Delhi-Ambala and Ballari-Hosapete, each adding a 3rd and 4th line, spanning about 389 km across 12 districts in Delhi, Haryana, Maharashtra and Karnataka. Total cost is around ₹18,509 crore, with completion targeted by 2030-31, and construction expected to generate about 265 lakh human-days of direct employment.

Why quadruple tracks instead of just running trains better?

Seven routes carry 41% of all rail traffic on just 16% of the network, so extra physical lines let freight and passenger trains be separated and scheduled independently rather than competing for the same two tracks. Vaishnaw framed it as cheaper and cleaner too: rail freight costs about ₹1.6 per tonne-km versus ₹3.6 for roads.

Won't new freight corridors make this unnecessary?

No, because the two existing dedicated freight corridors only cover about 3,260 km, mostly along the Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Kolkata axes, and handle roughly 10% of freight traffic on about 4% of track length. The seven high-density routes span 11,000 km and carry 41% of all traffic, including passengers, so the freight corridors solve a narrower problem than what four-tracking addresses.

Did the freight corridors already ease congestion on these routes?

Yes, partly. Railways says diverting freight onto the Eastern and Western corridors freed up paths on the older network, letting daily train traffic there rise from about 247 trains a day in 2023-24 to 371 in February 2025. But that relief is limited to the stretches those two corridors actually run alongside, not the full 11,000 km of high-density routes.

Are more freight corridors planned to cover the gap?

Three more are under consideration, the North-South, East-Coast and East-West corridors, but none had been formally sanctioned as of March 2025. Railways says the decision depends on technical feasibility, financial viability, traffic demand and funding availability, so there is no committed timeline for them to extend the same relief to other busy routes.

What is the bigger structural mismatch driving this?

Freight corridors are built as separate, freight-only lines running parallel to existing tracks, useful only where new alignments were funded and constructed. Passenger and freight trains still share tracks everywhere else. Four-tracking instead adds capacity directly on the same busy corridors carrying both passengers and goods, which is why 41% of traffic on just 16% of the network still needs its own fix.