Chandigarh Pulse

In the first step towards running high-speed passenger trains at 300-350 kmph,”the ministry of railways has floated a global tender for conducting a pre-feasibility study for constructing two corridors at the Delhi-Chandigarh-Amritsar”and Pune-Mumbai-Ahmedabad”sections of Indian Railways. However, experts in the ministry told The Statesman that even if all goes according to plan and there was no change of mind within the political establishment about the ambitious project, the first high-speed train running at 300-350 kmph”is unlikely to be launched before 2015.

Ministry officials admitted that it would take some time before India matched China in railway infrastructure development but claimed that when flagged off the proposed high speed passenger train would be far better in looks and performance than China’s first bullet train that began operating between Beijing and the port city of Tianjin,”a month ahead of the recent Beijing Olympics. But before that China will have run its own high-speed train at about 350 kmph”speed between Beijing and Shanghai in 2012.

The move to float a global tender for appointing consultants for a pre-feasibility study came following the railway minister, Mr Lalu”Prasad’s announcement to that effect during his 2007-08 Railway Budget speech. The proposed passenger train corridor, according to ministry officials, would be equipped with state-of-the-art signalling”and train control systems.

These trains would cover distances up to 600 km in 2-3 hours. The ministry plans to adopt PPP”(private public partnership) for implementing the passenger train corridor project. The stress will be on using high-tech energy efficient and environment friendly systems in the project, the ministry officials said.

Given the high-cost of the passenger train corridor project (estimated to be Rs 60 crore per km), the ministry plans to target only “rich passengers” ready to shell out a ticket price that would be on par with airline fares.

The ministry is also deliberating on ways to making purchase of tickets a smooth affair. Since the travel time is unlikely to be more than 2 to 2.5 hour a passengers could ill afford to wait long to get his or her ticket. All these aspects would be taken into account while selecting consultants for the pre-feasibility study.

After the pre-feasibility study a detailed project report would be prepared. Railway officials said construction work for the project would take at least five years to complete.