ABSTRACT:

Indian Railways is the backbone of urban transportation and freight movement within the country, one of the biggest employer in the country, of late lot of importance is given for freight movement through the railways as its cheaper, faster, safer and more sustainable than the roadways, also reduces traffic congestion on road and curtail greenhouse gas emission.

This paper critically analyse the freight movement of Indian Railways by analysing three research question that is, whether the earning in freight has any relation to freight traffic of Indian Railways with the distance travelled with cargo (net tonne kilometre), whether freight traffic of Indian railways has any influence with Port throughput and also to find whether the pandemic has affected the movement of rail freight. the author applied simple regression and multiple regression techniques for the study. The outcome of the study shows there is strong relationship exist between earnings and the freight handled but there is no significant relationship between net tonne kilometres (in million) and Earnings (in crores). The Port transports a portion of their volume of cargo through railways, there exist a strong positive correlation between freight transported in Railways and Cargo handled in Ports. The growth rate of railways in transporting goods has hit very hard during 2019-20 was mainly due to pandemic.

Key Words: Railway freight, COVID-19, Tonnes Originating, Earnings on Freight and Net Tonne Kilometres