High-speed Rail corridors to be developed in India

The Railways has launched High Speed Rail Corporation of India Ltd. (HSRC), a subsidiary of Rail Vikas Nigam Ltd. (RVNL).

The Minister of Railways Shri Mallikarjun inaugurated a two day international technical conference on “High Speed Rail Travel; Low Cost Solution” in New Delhi today (29.10.2013). While addressing the conference, the Railway Minister said that India’s primary focus has been to provide a mass mode of safe, reliable and affordable transport, being the largest passenger Railway in the world, it is a natural aspiration of the people of this country that Indian Railways provide them high speed rail travel.

Shri Kharge said that most countries consider high speed capability to be in the range of 250 to 300 kmph which requires a dedicated track with fencing and can be prohibitively costly. For a country like ours track fencing also has its own set of associated issues. Thus, leveraging Rolling stock technologies may provide a lower cost solution to meet the immediate needs of achieving speeds of 160 to 200 kmph and that too on the existing track. For speeds above 200 kmph the costlier and time consuming solution of providing a separate dedicated track with fencing becomes inescapable. Therefore, the focus of this conference is to consider achieving higher speed trains in the range of 160 to 200 kmph with marginal inputs in the existing infrastructure, besides given the financial constraints and issues related to land acquisition and track fencing, as an interim step, the Railway Minister said.

Addressing the conference, Shri Arunendra Kumar, Chairman, Railway Board, said that Indian Railways has undertaken pre-feasibility studies of seven high speed corridors. A preliminary study for Mumbai-Ahmedabad route has estimated its cost to be around Rs. 65,000 crore. He said that towards this purpose the Institute of Rolling Stock Engineers (IRSE) with support from Indian Railways and RITES is organising this International Technical Conference. The themes of the conference will include: World overview of High Speed technologies, High speed Bogie Technologies, Importance of Train Dynamics for high speed operation, Wheel sets for high speed operation, Lightweight coach Technologies, Track & infrastructure, Signaling technologies, Traction related issues, brake systems and maintenance aspects specific to High Speed operation and Safety.