Seven decades of independence, still we lag behind in better, faster and economical connectivity within India and countries abroad.
Indian Railways is fast bringing in better technology to incredibly cut ETA. First Tejas made the news this year, now the talk of the town is upcoming Bullet Train.
According to senior Railway official (as told to Financial Express), a bullet train traveling at a speed of 300 km/hour will start in coming years from Delhi to Amritsar via Chandigarh. The 458-km long train journey will be completed in 2 hours and 3 minutes. The bullet train will also stop at Panipat, Ambala, Chandigarh and Ludhiana.
Presently, the Delhi to Amritsar Shatabdi Express train takes around 6 hours. Thus with bullet train travel time will come down to one-third!
The distance between Delhi to Chandigarh – 258 kms – will be covered in 1 hour and 12 minutes.
It is reported that at the 2015 prices, the base fare of Rs 4.5 per km has been recommended, which means a Delhi-Amritsar trip will cost you minimum of Rs 2061 (4.5*458). While, Delhi-Chandigarh journey will cost a minimum of Rs 1161.
At a 2015 price level, the total project cost has been estimated at Rs 61,412 crore. The project is expected to take between 6 to 8 years to complete and is expected to start operations not before 2025. The Indian Railways ministry is still to study the finer details of the project and take a final call on the implementation of the project.
A dedicated ‘High Speed Rail Corporation of India (HSRC)’ has been set up by Indian Railways to deal with all the proposed high-speed rail corridors, though the much popular Mumbai and Ahmedabad is not under it. The project for country’s maiden bullet train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad comes under the National High-Speed Rail Corporation. The other proposed high-speed rail corridors are Delhi-Mumbai, Mumbai-Chennai, Delhi-Kolkata, Delhi-Nagpur-Chennai, Mumbai-Nagpur, Chennai-Bengaluru-Mysore.