As part of the modernization of India Railways, Railway Minister Lalu Prasad is expected to announce a policy envisaging introduction of bullet trains with a minimum speed of 250 kms per hour.
To begin with, bullet trains would be introduced on the 500-km Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor which will connect the two cities in less than two hours as against five to six hours by the existing fastest train Shatabdi Express.
Under the Mumbai-Ahmedabad project, which the railway ministry estimates to cost Rs 8,000 crore (Rs 80 billion), the train would fly four inches above the track on a 'magnetic leviathan' track and would be virtually free from accidents.
The proposed Mumbai-Ahmedabad high speed corridor would be a dedicated route fully fenced free from any road block, like crossings, railway ministry sources said.
Later, they said, the high-speed corridor on Indian Railways would include Dhanbad-Howrah, Tatanagar-Howrah, Bangalore-Chennai, Chennai-Hyderabad, Mumbai-Pune and others.
"The policy is expected to be announced by Prasad at a press conference shortly. The policy enunciates plan for introduction of a bullet train with a minimum speed of 250 kms per hour or more," the sources said.
The policy was being prepared for forwarding it to the Planning Commission which would work out the measures for modernisation, upgradatiuon and increase in line capacity and high speed trains.
For the introduction of high-speed trains, two reputed Japanese companies having expertise in the technology have been commissioned to study the projects' techno-economic feasibility and its report was expected this month.
Japan is the leader in high-speed rail technology having introduced bullet trains way back in 1960, followed by other countries in Europe, America, France and China which have the fastest running trains at the minimum speed of over 400 kms per hour.
Prior to Japanese companies, RITES had taken up techno-economic feasibility reports despite the fact that Indian Railways do not have high-speed technology which has to be imported 100 per cent.
The sources said that in a fast globalising environment, India needs to improve its transport infrastructure, "for this purpose, it must showcase high-speed train services."
