BULLET TRAINS IN INDIA – A VISIONARY’S IDEA, OR AN EXCELLENT RE-PACKAGING? (with apologies for this long note! ) - :) The BJP spokesperson Nirmala Seetharaman, in an interview to BBC news on Monday night, talked of BJP’s plans to introduce bullet trains, saying something like “the congress has not done anything about it”. I did a quick search on the web, and found that the planning of bullet trains is well underway under the present UPA regime! Read on: a)The Indian Railways VISION 2020 (Presented to Parliament in 2009) envisaged the following on High Speed Corridors: Indian Railways would follow a two-pronged approach in this respect. The first approach would be to raise the speed of segregated passenger corridors on trunk routes using conventional technology to 160 to 200 kmph. The second approach would be to identify a number of intercity routes …. and build state-of-the-art high-speed corridors for speeds up to 350 kmph … By 2020, at least four corridors of 2000 kms would be developed and planning for 8 other corridors would be in different stages of progress. b)The Expert Group for Modernization of Indian Railways in its report of Feb, 2012 made the following recommendations: Construct a High Speed railway line between Ahmedabad and Mumbai with speed of 350 kmph. Undertake detailed studies for 6 other High Speed rail corridors already identified. These include: (1) Delhi-Chandigarh-Amritsar (450 km); (2) Hyderabad-Dornakal-Vijayawada-Chennai (664 km); (3) Howrah-Haldia (135 km); (4) Chennai-Bangalore-Coimbatore-Ernakulam (850 km); (5) Delhi-Agra-Lucknow-Varanasi-Patna (991 km) & (6) Ernakulam-Trivandrum (194 km)... c)During the 2012 Rail Budget speech, Railway Minister Dinesh Trivedi announced that pre-feasibility studies on the Ahmedabad-Mumbai-Pune, Delhi-Agra-Lucknow-Varanasi-Patna, Howrah-Haldia, Hyderabad-Dornakal-Vijaywada-Chennai and the Chennai-Bangalore-Coimbatore-Kochi high-speed corridors have already been completed and study on Delhi-Jaipur-Ajmer-Jodhpur route will be taken up in 2012-13. d)A High Speed Train Corporation was launched on 25 July 2012, as a Special Purpose Vehicle as a subsidiary of Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (which is a Mini-Ratna public sector enterprise of Government of India), for development and implementation of high speed rail projects. Its objectives are: • To undertake feasibility studies and techno-economic investigations and prepare Detailed Project Reports and Bankability Reports of selected corridors for introduction of High Speed trains in India. • To plan, design and freeze technical parameters for High Speed Rail Systems including fixed assets, rolling stock and operations. • To develop financing models, explore PPP options, coordinate with stake holders and funding agencies and obtain various Government approvals. • Project development, project execution, construction, upgradation, manufacture, operation and maintenance of High Speed Rail Systems on existing as well as new rail corridors. • To enter into and carry on all businesses related to High Speed Rail Systems and other rail based traffic as may be approved by Government of India or RVNL or any other Authority created by the Government for such activities. e) On 7 October 2013, MoU was signed between Indian Railways and Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) for a feasibility study into construction of a 540km high-speed line between Mumbai and Ahmedabad. A preliminary study carried out by consortium of Rites, Italferr, and Systra, estimated the cost of the project at Rs 700bn ($US 13.2bn). f) Indian Railways is in the process of setting up a High Speed Rail Authority (HSRA) as a regulatory body (under the 12th 5 year plan, 2012-2017) which will supervise administrative, institutional, and financial issues. g) The following are the identified High Speed Passenger Corridors, and the approval status of their pre-feasibility studies Corridor, Length(km), Approval Status Howrah - Haldia, 135 km, Approved by Planning Commission & PMO Delhi - Patna, 991 km, Approved by Planning Commission & PMO Delhi - Amritsar , 450 km, Approved by Planning Commission & PMO Delhi - Jodhpur, 591 km, Proposed Chennai - Blr - Trivandrm, 649 km, Approved by Planning Commission & PMO Hyderabad - Chennai, 664 km, Approved by Planning Commission & PMO Trivandrm- Mangalore, 585 km, Approved by Planning Commission & PMO Bangalore - Mysore, 110 km, Proposed Ahmedabad - Dwarka, To be announced Mumbai - Nagpur, Proposed Pune-Mumbai-A’mdabad, 650 km, Approved by Planning Commission & PMO Rajkot - Veraval, To be announced Sources: onrails.in/content/proposed-bullet-trainhigh-speed-rail-network-india.html hsrc.in/index.html
Posted on: Wed, 09 Apr 2014 06:48:19 +0000
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