MUMBAI: Indian Railways is set to begin construction on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed bullet train corridor next year to make train travel faster in India reports TOI quoting Railway board member (traffic) Mohammed Jamshed. The project is expected to be completed between 2023 and 2024.
Japan is also giving India a loan of upto 81% of cost at 0.1% interest rate per annum as well as Japanese Shinkansen high-speed technology to build the corridor. The load has to be repaid in 50 years with a 15 year moratorium. A “National High Speed Rail Corporation” has already been formed to implement the same.
The Indian Railways has indentified five other corridors for over 300 kmph speed trains. These are Delhi-Mumbai high speed corridor, Mumbai-Chennai high speed corridor, Delhi-Kolkata high speed corridor, Delhi-Nagpur high speed corridor and Mumbai-Nagpur high speed corridor.
Meanwhile Spanish manufacturer of high-speed trains Talgo has successfully completed its three-phase trials in India with the final run completed on the Delhi-Mumbai Rajdhani stretch. Talgo trials proved that the travel time can be reduced by 4 hours compared to Rajdhani train.
The Indian Railways’ high-speed train programme aims to run trains at a speed of over 300 kmph as well as run semi-high speed trains at 160-200 kmph speeds. Alsom, it plans to take steps to make existing trains run at higher speeds.
Musafir Namah Bureau
