PM may gift India’s first bullet train on 75th year of Independence

Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi and Prime Minister of Japan Shinzo Abe on 14 September, 2017 laid the foundation stone for India’s first high-speed rail project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad. The groundbreaking ceremony was held at the Sabarmati railway station, in Ahmedabad, Gujarat.

Most part of the 508 km corridor is proposed to be on the elevated track, there will be a stretch after Thane creek towards Virar which will go under the sea. The starting point of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high speed corridor will be at BKC. The proposed bullet train will start underground from BKC and travel 21 km in a tunnel passing through the sea before emerging above the ground at Thane.

The ambitious high speed rail project will be developed under the objectives of “Make in India” & “Transfer of Technology” objectives.

At present 12 stations have been proposed, these include- Mumbai, Thane, Virar, Boisar, Vapi, Bilimora, Surat, Bharuch, Vadodara, Anand, Ahmedabad and Sabarmati. The stretch will later be extended to Pune, Maharashtra.

The high speed rail will have a maximum design speed of 350 km per hour and operating speed of 320 km per hour. The project is a joint venture between the Indian Railways and Japanese firm Shinkansen Technology.

The project will be built at an estimated cost of around Rs 97,600. Japan will provide a 50 year loan of Rs 88,000 crore to finance the project at a 0.1 percent interest rate.

Initially, the train will have 10 coaches with a total seating capacity of 750 passengers. Later, it is proposed to have 16 coaches with a seating capacity of 1,250 passengers.

A dedicated High Speed Rail Training Institute will train about 4,000 technical staff of the bullet train project. The project will create 20,000 construction jobs, 4,000 direct jobs and 20,000 indirect jobs.

The Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Bullet train project is expected to be completed by December 2023. However, the centre is confident that the project would be completed by August 2022 to commemorate at 75 years of Independence.

In addition to Mumbai–Ahmedabad high speed (over 300 km per hour) corridor, five more corridors on diamond quadrilateral in the country are being explored and consultants have been appointed to undertake feasibility studies.