China To Develop High-Speed Bangalore-Chennai Railway Corridor

Written By: Stephen Neil Updated: Tuesday, April 24, 2018

 The relationship between India and China seems set to become better after the Strategic Economic dialogue was held between the two countries at Beijing. One of the important deals discussed at the conference was, to increase the speed of the Bangalore-Chennai railway corridor. According to media reports, India has approached China to up the speed of the railway corridor between Bangalore and Chennai. 

This will thereby decrease travel time between the two metropolitan cities. Rajiv Kumar, the chairman of NITI Aayog was quoted as saying, "We offered them the speeding up of Bangalore-Chennai railway corridor." Other officials revealed that the previous offers to China for redeveloping the Agra and Jhansi railway stations have been emphasized on, once again. 

Chinese officials are expected to respond to the offer after studying and assessing the proposals. China has been interested in developing high-speed train corridors in India. However, nothing has materialised yet. 

China and Germany have in the past conducted feasibility studies for a high speed train corridor between Bangalore and Chennai.The train was expected to cover the 340-kilometre distance in around 90-minutes. 

The fastest train on this route currently is the Shatabdi Express which takes five hours to run between the two cities. The project though was shelved after both Chinese and German officials concluded that infrastructure development costs are higher than the benefits. 

This time around though, the Chinese have been approached to increase the speed of the current railway line. This would enable the more powerful engines being used by the Indian Railways to touch speeds of around 150km/h. No train in India currently does more than 120-130km/h. Several Indian railways locomotives like the WAP-7, WAP-5 and the WDP-4 are capable of doing speeds like this. They are however, limited by unguarded tracks, indisciplined railway crossings, etc. If the proposal is accepted, China would help change just that. 

There are no talks at present to take help from China to build high speed trains. It was only recently that Japan bagged a deal to develop a high-speed railway line and train, which would reduce travel time between Ahmedabad and Mumbai to just three hours. This train is expected to run at speeds in excess of 300km/h. 

DriveSpark's Thoughts On China Developing The Bangalore-Chennai Railway Corridor: Karnataka is the seventh-largest and Tamil Nadu, the 11th largest state in India. The capitals of these two states having faster rail connectivity will help not just in transportation of people, but in transporting goods as well.