Mysuru-Chennai high-speed rail on the anvil

The railway has fast-tracked the 435-km long high-speed rail (bullet train) corridor between Mysuru-Bengaluru-Chennai. NHAI will acquire land to lay tracks for high-speed trains along the greenfield expressways for integrated development of the rail transport network in the country. The NHAI will take over land acquisition and a four-member committee has been formed to look into the matter. The committee will work on the modalities for acquiring land and its cost estimation. The Indian Railways plans to run bullet trains on 7 important new routes of the country including Delhi to Varanasi via Noida, Agra and Lucknow; Varanasi to Howrah via Patna; Delhi to Ahmedabad via Jaipur and Udaipur; Delhi to Amritsar via Chandigarh, Ludhiana and Jalandhar; Mumbai to Nagpur via Nasik; Mumbai to Hyderabad via Pune and Chennai to Mysore via Bengaluru. The bullet train will run at a maximum speed of 320 km per hour and the actual distance from Mysuru to Chennai is over 485 km while the bullet train corridor will be 435 km. As per the train speed, it can cover the 145-km distance from Mysuru to Bengaluru in 45 minutes.