Modi government begins work on running bullet trains

 Modi government begins work on running bullet trains

  Date: 30 May 2014,

New Delhi: In order to fulfill Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s poll promise of connecting all the four metros with high-speed bullet trains, the Planning Commission on Thursday held a high-level meeting with railway officials to discuss the dream project.


According to sources, they discussed about how to devise a long-term plan for a modern network of high-speed trains in the country. The officials of a consultancy firm working on high-speed train projects in US gave presentation during the meeting in this regard.

The officials also discussed the sources of huge budget required for the mega project. Sources said that a total of Rs 11 lakh crore would require for developing this high-speed rail network linking Delhi-Mumbai-Chennai-Kolkata.

Meanwhile, the railway officials also discussed about the progress of a pilot project of running such a train on the Delhi-Agra section.

"We are trying to make the track between Delhi and Agra ready for running trains at 160 km per hour speed and hand it over to the Commissioner for Railway Safety for inspection by November so that it can be operational by the year-end," said a senior Railway Ministry official.

Currently, Bhopal Shatabdi takes 126 minutes to reach Agra from Delhi at an average speed of 110 km per hour and with the increased speed of 160 km the travelling time will be reduced to 90 minutes. The distance between Delhi and Agra by train is nearly 200 km.
(JPN/Bureau/Agencies)