Railways launches Rail-Post Gati Shakti Cargo service

Indian Railways and India Post jointly launched Rail-Post Gati Shakti Cargo, a new parcel transportation service, on Thursday.

The Department of Post will book parcels and railways will transport them with a guaranteed transit time in its parcel trains. Once the parcel reaches its destination, the Postal Department will carry the parcel to its last-mile destinations, the railways said.

At present, the service has been launched with four sectors-Delhi to Kolkata, Bengaluru-Guwahati, Surat to Muzaffarpur and Hyderabad to Hazrat Nizamuddin. Soon the service will be launched in another 11 sectors, said the Ministry of Railways.

The railways will run 12 pairs of trains every week offering to transport items which generally go by trucks.

The scheme was announced in the 2022-23 budget as part of the railway's revenue generation plan.

Salient features of this initiative include doorstep pickup and delivery, time-tabled train service, safe transmission, affordable tariff, single point of contact and mobile application. For the first time tariff on the basis of per Kg of goods per km has been determined, said the railways.

"The railways launched pilot service on 31st March 2022 from Surat to Varanasi by attaching a parcel van to Tapti Ganga Express. After conducting 99 trials on single parcel van mode and 16 trials on full train load mode, the Railways have decided to launch this combined initiative across the network," said the railways in a statement.