dna special: Bullet train could bring in as much as windfall as city's suburban network- Officials

The Rs97,636-crore Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project, according to different officials dna spoke to, agreed that the project leans heavily on hope — the hope that the transformation of Ahmedabad into a world-class financial and business centre is realised and that it along with traditional powerhouse Mumbai forms a twin-engine development vehicle to create several new economic and residential townships along the way. And there is also the hope that it can create as much wealth as Mumbai's suburban network has done for over a century now.

The railways recently announced that it was looking at an initial ridership of 13 million passengers per year, or around 35,616 commuters per day, on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high speed system by the time it starts in 2023.

"This is a figure almost impossible to achieve if only Mumbai and Ahmedabad are taken into account. We need a situation where interim stations Dahanu, Surat, Vadodara and the areas around them also contribute with passengers heavily," pointed out an official.

Several other officials agreed that the network has to be about passengers and not about money. "This is what bullet trains do. They are not about making profits for the train operator in the strictest sense. It is about compressing time and merging two big cities into one big commuting network. Imagine if the travel time between Mumbai and Ahmedabad is around the same as CST to Badlapur or Churchgate to Virar? It means that like in the suburban system, people can commute on a daily basis between the two cities as if it was one big metropolitan region. In fact, for stations in between, like Surat and Vadodara, both Mumbai and Ahmedabad become an hour away, like Kalyan to CST or Borivli to Churchgate. It could do what the suburban network in Mumbai did — transform it into India's richest city in terms of everything from income tax to custom duties to corporate taxes," explained an official.

Others pointed to the long loan period as well as the favourable loan term as another plus. "It is a loan of Rs79,000 crore that has to be paid over 35 years after a 15-year moratorium at an interest rate of 0.1%. If India's economy grows at the levels it is doing so now for another decade, we are looking at a situation where the repayment of this loan starting 2030 will be far more comfortable than what the numbers portray now. An investment of Rs1 lakh crore to build a bullet train to compress time between two big cities can spawn an entire region of economic growth. The returns would dwarf the loan amount," said an official.

The number game

Cost of construction: Rs97,636 crore
Loan from Japan: Rs79,000 crore (around 81%)
Ridership: Around 35,600 per day
Length of trains: Between 10 and 16 cars
Train capacity: Between 1,300 and 1,600 passengers per train
Max design speed: 350 kmph
Max operations speed: 320km
Distance: 508km
Quickest trip on network: 2 hours 7 minutes