The much-hyped plan to increase the speed of the 1,385-km Mumbai-Delhi rail route to cater to speeds of about 160-200 km per hour will cost Rs 11,188 crore as per calculations put out in the Pink Book of the railways. Of the total amount, Rs 1,118 crore will come from the railways, while Rs 10,070 crore will come from extra budgetary resources, in all probability from the Rs 1.5 lakh crore loan agreement inked with the Life Insurance Corporation. The plan is part of the railway's mission to reduce the travel time between Mumbai and Delhi to less than 12 hours from the current 16-18 hours taken by the Rajdhani Express, which runs at an average speed of 89.76 kmph.
However, the hitch is that the Union Budget, which include railway finances, has only allotted Rs 1 lakh for the project for financial year 2017-18.
This paltry token allotment, according to officials, is a giveaway that the project is at a nascent stage and might not take off at all in 2017. The work, if and when it begins, could take a better part of a decade to finish, said railway officials associated with the project.
The railway's biggest 'made-for-the-media' moment of 2016 was the trial of the Spanish train-manufacturer Talgo's rake, whose trial was conducted between Mumbai and Delhi as well as other smaller stretches between the two cities. However, inherent limitations of the speed of tracks came to the fore because despite having a top speed potential of 200 kmph, the maximum speed the Talgo could achieve during trials was 117.5 kmph, when it made the trip between Delhi and Mumbai on September 11 in 11 hours and 48 minutes.
The Railway Ministry also has plans to buy high-speed trainsets capable of running at 200 kmph to replace the current rakes of the Rajdhani and Shatabdi. The Mumbai-Delhi route will get a substantial number of these trainsets as well, said officials.
The railway has plans to increase the speeds on nine routes — Delhi-Agra, Delhi-Chandigarh, Delhi-Kanpur, Nagpur-Bilaspur, Mysuru-Bengaluru-Chennai, Mumbai-Goa, Mumbai-Ahmedabad, Chennai-Hyderabad and Nagpur-Secunderabad.
In the works
The Railway Ministry also has plans to buy high-speed trainsets capable of running at 200 kmph to replace the current rakes of the Rajdhani and Shatabdi.
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