BT Budget Roundtable: Can make many more high-speed corridors in the future, says Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw

The construction work for India’s first bullet train is happening at a very fast pace, said Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw at Business Today’s Budget Roundtable 2023. After long delays caused due to various factors including land acquisition and Covid pandemic, India’s first bullet train is expected to run between Mumbai and Ahmedabad by August 2027.

“Already 140 kilometres of pillars have been cast, almost 28 kilometers of girders have been laid. All the eight rivers, the bridges have reached deck level, All the 13 stations, the work is going on,” said minister Vaishnaw.

Vaishnaw explained this is a very complex system. He said, “I wouldn't take any name of any other country, but there are countries which have taken 15 to 18 years to design the high-speed railway.”

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To help understand the challenge at hand, he said driving and controlling a car at the speed of 100 km/hr is a difficult thing. This high-speed bullet train will run at 320 km/hr. “Designing that kind of complex system, making sure that it is in tune with our climate, with our soil characteristics, with our way of movement, everything it takes to three years and there was two years which were lost in corona. Now, the pace is going at a very good speed. And today, we are in a position where we have understood and absorbed the technology, and we can take up many more high-speed corridors in future,” he added.

Speaking on the future of high-speed bullet trains in India, Vaishnaw dug deeper into transport economics and urban economics. He said: “High-speed rail is not merely a transportation product. Take the case of the first Shinkansen. From Tokyo Nagoya Kobe Kyoto Osaka. These six large economic zones became one super-large economic zone. The same is the case for Mumbai, Thane, Wapi, Surat, Baroda, and Ahmedabad. All these six cities will become one single economic zone because of the high-speed train. That's the power of a high-speed rail system, and no wonder wherever countries have done high-speed rail, those cities, and those areas, those regions have got significant economic growth.”

As India has a large number of cities which are million plus, there are many more corridors that the government is identifying. “The government has absorbed the technology, we have understood the construction methods, we have understood how complex it is to design it, and now we can take more projects,” said Vaishnaw.