Ahmedabad: Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe laid the foundation stone for India’s first bullet train project in Ahmedabad on September 14.
The government has said the bullet train technology will revolutionize and transform the railways.
Here’s all you need to know about the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project:
Passenger information: The train will have a top speeds of 320-350 km per hour and it is expected to reduce travel time between the two cities to around 2 hours from the existing 7-8 hours. The fares could be in the range of Rs 3000 – Rs 5,000.
Passengers will have two speed options in trains: High-speed: It will take 2.58 hours to reach the destination or Rapid high-speed: It will cover the distance in 2.07 hours.
Commuters and capacity: Initially, each high speed train will have 10 cars and the capacity to accommodate 750 people, report said. It will increase to 16 cars that will accommodate 1,200 people.
According to initial estimates, around 1.6 crore people are expected to travel by the bullet train annually. By 2050, around 1.6 lakh commuters should travel by the high-speed train on a daily basis.
Stations: On the Ahmedabad-Mumbai route, 12 stations have been proposed: Mumbai, Thane, Virar, Boisar, Vapi, Bilimora, Surat, Bharuch, Vadodara, Anand, Ahmedabad and Sabarmati.
Route: The railways will only require around 825 hectares of land for the project as 92% of the route will be elevated, six per cent will go through tunnels and only the remaining two per cent will be on the ground. India’s longest tunnel — 21-km-long — will be dug between Boisar and BKC in Mumbai, 7km of which will be under the sea.
The train tracks will elevated to 18 meters for most of its route to ensure the train runs over the existing railway route. The remaining, less than 40km, stretch will be under sea between Thane and Vasai, and underground in Mumbai, the report said.
Project completion: The 508km-long Mumbai to Ahmedabad High Speed Rail (MAHSR) is scheduled for completion in December 2023, but commencement date has been sought to be advanced to August 2022.
Funding:To fund the ambitious Rs 110,000-crore project, a loan of Rs 88,000 crore will be taken from Japan. The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA) will fund it at a low rate of interest of 0.1% per annum. This loan has to be repaid to Japan in 50 years, with 15 years grace period.
Training and job creation: The government said it will create around 15 lakh new jobs in India. A dedicated High Speed Rail Training Institute will train about 4,000 technical staff of the bullet train project, report said.
The Japanese government has also offered training of Indian Railways officials in Japan besides reserving fully-funded seats for the Master’s course in the universities of Japan for them.
Second bullet train project: The Indian Railways will launch the country’s second high-speed train from Delhi to Amritsar via Chandigarh. The train will run on standard broad gauge and the project shall be completed by 2024. The proposed train will cover the 458-km-long route in 2 hours and 30 minutes running at a speed of 300-350 kmph, reducing the travel time between New Delhi and Amritsar by about two and a half hours.
Proposed stops will be Ambala, Chandigarh, Ludhiana, Jalandhar. The fare will be fixed equivalent to that of Shatabdi’s AC executive class.
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