Railway plans two new bullet train projects

According to an NHSRCL spokesperson, a detailed project report for the Mumbai-Nagpur corridor is in the final stages and will be submitted to the railway ministry in the first quarter of the next fiscal. Work on preparing DPR for five more bullet train projects is also progressing well, and NHSRCL will be able to complete the task within FY23. According to initial estimates, the Delhi-Varanasi project will cost around ₹1.5 trillion, while the Mumbai-Nagpur corridor could cost slightly less. The detailed project report on the Delhi-Varanasi corridor includes multiple studies that the corporation has conducted on the kind of expected ridership, impact on surrounding villages, land requirement, social impact assessment and effect on the environment.
Currently, India’s first bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad is being executed by NHSRCL. The 500km-plus section will entail an investment of more than ₹1 trillion, with trains plying at close to 300km per hour, using Japanese E5 Shinkansen technology. A trial run on a small 50km section—Surat to Vilimura—of this project is expected by 2026. The investment on the project so far ₹39,000 crore. Last year, the railway ministry sanctioned feasibility studies for seven more bullet train corridors, in addition to the Mumbai-Ahmedabad section. These are Delhi-Amritsar, Varanasi-Howrah, Delhi-Varanasi, Delhi-Ahmedabad, Mumbai-Hyderabad, Mumbai-Nagpur and Chennai-Mysore. Apart from the bullet train, the national transporter also invites private players to run trains on the Indian Railways network and twelve clusters have been identified by Indian Railways involving over 100 routes and the introduction of 150 private trains.