The Indian Railways has undertaken the giant task of reducing journey time on the Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai routes. It plans to achieve this by deploying semi-high speed trains that can notch up to 160 km per hour.
According to Business Standard, the Ministry of Railways will soon approach the Cabinet to clear the two semi-high speed train project which will cost around Rs 18,000 crore.
“The project has got the nod from NITI Aayog. We are planning to approach the Cabinet on this soon,” an official close to the development told Business Standard.
Semi-high speed trains can cover a maximum speed range of 160 to 200 km per hour, while the ones that can run at 300 km per hour are categorised as high speed trains. Railways has recently introduced Gatimaan Express between Delhi and Agra which runs at a speed of 160 km per hour.
The New Delhi-Mumbai train will cover 1,483 route km, the New Delhi-Howrah train will traverse 1,525 route km.
About 70 percent of the total 2900-km-long routes of Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah which are compatible of running trains at a maximum speed of 130 km per hour. So we have to upgrade the rest of the route.Railway Official
The Delhi-Howrah, Delhi-Mumbai rail corridors are among the two major busy routes of the Golden Quadrilateral of Indian Railways. Other routes are Howrah-Chennai, Delhi-Chennai and Chennai-Mumbai.
While the Delhi-Howrah route is used by about 120 passenger trains and around 100 goods trains every day, some 90 passenger services and an equal number of freight trains run on the Delhi-Mumbai corridor daily.
Under Indian Railways ‘Mission Raftaar’, the plan is to increase the train speed to up to 160 km per hour on the total 9000-km main trunk routes across the country, the Railway official had earlier said.
In August 2017, India, in a joint venture with Japan, also laid the foundation for its first bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad. It will cover the distance of 508 km in around 2 hours and is capable of reaching a speed of 350 km per hour.
(With inputs from PTI)
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