The railways, under new minister Suresh Prabhu, has begun moving on Prime Minister Narendra Modi's bullet train dream in right earnest.
On November 21, the interim report on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train corridor was submitted by experts from the Japan Industrial Cooperation Agency to the infrastructure directorate of the railway board, the final report is expected by May next year.
Meanwhile, a five-member team led by Rail Vikas Nigam Limited (RVNL) chief Satish Agnihotri left for China on Monday night on a five-day tour to assess the possibility of a Delhi-Chennai bullet train.
Speaking to dna, chief spokesperson for the railway ministry Anil Saxena said the team will discuss the terms and conditions of the feasibility study for the Delhi-Chennai project. "The cost of the study will be borne by the China Railway Corporation, which is the government operator of railways there," he added.
Agnihotri, an Indian Institute of Technology (Roorkee) alumnus and an Indian Railway Service of Engineers official from the 1984 batch, has spearheaded railways' bullet train endeavours for the past few years. Agnihotri has had training in Germany, France and Austria on the maintenance of high-speed tracks. RVNL is the parent company of High Speed Rail Corporation of India Limited, the latter entrusted with working on country's future bullet train corridors.
While the quick moves by the railways on this has elicited cheers from one of its sections, another is calling it "good TRP" for the railways.
"The Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor is expected to cost Rs60,000 crore and, by the same standards of cost estimation, the Delhi-Chennai corridor will be Rs2 lakh crore. The question is whether these two projects are needed. It may be soft loans from Japan or China, but the railways could do better to put this kind of money to upgrade tracks to a standard of 200kmph. It is a shame that the benchmark for a superfast train in India is if it runs at an average speed of above 55kmph throughout its journey," said a senior railway official.
