Mumbai-Delhi in 10 hours! Trial train arrives in city

Railway Minister Piyush Goyal has come up with 100-day plan to achieve the Mumbai-Delhi train distance in 10 hours from the existing 15.5 hours by increasing speed in the sector to 160 kmph. The plan will come into effect four years from the day it is ready. To take the plan ahead, a Multiple Electric Mainline Unit train arrived in Mumbai quietly entering the Kalwa car shed so that trials at 160kmph could begin right away.

This is one among the 11 top prioritized subjects that the railway ministry intends to achieve with the railway board chairman sounding out a note to all railway zones with a directive to implement an action plan by August 31.

A senior official said the idea is to obtain the necessary approvals for raising speed of 1,483 km New Delhi Mumbai (and also 1525 New Delhi-Howrah) routes to 160 crore. The Mumbai-Delhi plan has been envisaged at a cost of Rs 6806 crore.

The plan involves enhancing the existing track infrastructure which involves 30 pc of existing passenger traffic and 20 pc of freight traffic with the proposal sent to Cabinet Committee of Economic Affairs.

The implementation will be undertaken as a fixed time, fixed cost EPC contract. An Engineering, Procurement and Construction (EPC) contract is a particular form of contracting arrangement where the EPC contractor is made responsible for all the activities from design, procurement, construction, commissioning and handover of the project to the end-user. The idea is to reduce delays and cost run over while ensuring better coordination and economies of scale. The project is supposed to be implemented within four years of the date of finalisation.

Railway Board Member (Rolling Stock) Rajesh Agrawal had during the Mumbai visit said the Railways were planning to run trains with speeds of 160 kmph on Mumbai-Vadodara, Mumbai-Nashik and Mumbai-Pune sections to provide faster connectivity with cities close to the country's financial capital and that Mainline Electric Multiple Unit trains with underslung electricals on the lines of Train 18 will be used for it. The first of which entered Mumbai on Wednesday.

Meanwhile, the other 10 points of Goyal's 100-day agenda include providing wi-fi to all 6,485 stations of Indian Railways (as of now 1,603 stations have been provided), launch a massive passenger campaign to give up subsidy by calling it 'Give it Up' to reduce passenger subsidy on fares. From now on, while booking tickets, passengers would have option of buying ticket with or without subsidy, eliminate all manned level crossing gates at the Golden Quadrilateral and diagonals of Indian Railways by funding of bridges and subways across the country, running of private passenger trains with world-class passenger service, corporatization of all rail coach production units, digital rail corridors by strengthening the wireless network, advanced signalling system, station redevelopment, restructuring of Indian Railways for better efficiency and technological revamp of the system.

Catch up on all the latest Crime, National, International and Hatke news here. Also download the new mid-day Android and iOS apps to get latest updates