Golden Quadrilateral (Indian Railways)
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The Golden Quadrilateral is the name given to the rail links between the four largest metropolitan areas of India. These metros are:
The Golden Quadrilateral and it's diagonals carry roughly 60% of the passenger traffic and about 75% of the freight traffic in India
The name has also been used to refer to a large highway project linking the Indian metros.
The rail network of the Golden Quadrilateral has got saturated at most locations. Mumbai-Delhi and Mumbai-Howrah routes have very high capacity utilization. Additional freight corridor, along with accelerated programme of containerization, could contribute towards increasing the share of Railways in non-bulk traffic and create capacities to meet the expected annual demand.
The road project, when it is completed will doubtless help in easing this congestion. It is even feared that rail network will be reduced to insignificance; much like in Europe where the railways carry less than 10% of the freight traffic. This is unlikely given the overall capacity shortage on the circuit and the expected growth in general economic activity of the country.
However the increased modal competition will almost certainly change the Indian Railways' almost exclusive use of full rake load orders for freight traffic. Such marketing strategies are meant for maximising capacity utilization on a constrained system. Not when capacity is more than adequate.
