MP hails 435-km Mysuru-Bengaluru-Chennai Corridor

New Delhi: In a push for India’s marquee bullet train programme, the Railway Ministry is preparing the Detailed Project Reports (DPRs) for seven high speed rail corridors, Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha on Feb. 11.

These are: Delhi-Varanasi, Delhi-Amritsar, Delhi-Ahmedabad, Mumbai-Nagpur, Mumbai-Hyderabad, Chennai-Bengaluru-Mysuru, and Varanasi-Howrah. The Railways had received DPR for New Delhi-Varanasi Corridor from the National High Speed Rail Corp. Ltd (NHSRCL) and the same for Mumbai-Nagpur Corridor was in its final stages.

Calling out the Railway Minister’s announcement in the Parliament, Mysuru-Kodagu MP Pratap Simha has thanked the Minister and Prime Minister Narendra Modi for including Mysuru in India’s high-speed railway (bullet train) map.

India’s first bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad is being executed by NHSRCL. Work on the project, however, has been slow, with challenges in route alignment and acquisition. The 500-km-plus section will entail an investment of more than Rs. 1 trillion, with trains plying at close to 300-km per hour, using Japanese E5 Shinkansen technology.

Indian Railways has the world’s largest rail network under a single management and has been trying to become future ready. “Indian Railways have prepared a National Rail Plan (NRP) for India-2030. The plan is to create a ‘future ready’ Railway system by 2030. The NRP is aimed to formulate strategies based on both operational capacities and commercial policy initiatives to increase the modal share of the Railways in freight to 45 percent,” Vaishnaw said.

The DPR for the 435-km Mysuru-Bengaluru-Chennai Corridor is also being prepared. Once the project is implemented, the bullet train from Mysuru to Chennai via Bengaluru will take just two hours and 25 minutes as against the current seven hours in Shatabdi Express which is the fastest train on this route.

On a normal train journey, it takes over 10 hours to travel between the two cities. Shatabdi travels at a maximum speed of 110-km per hour.

The bullet train will run at a maximum speed of 320 kilometres per hour and the actual distance from Mysuru to Chennai is over 485 kilometres while the bullet train corridor will be 435 kilometres. Going by the train speed, it can cover the 145-km distance from Mysuru to Bengaluru in just 45 minutes.