Two of Maharashtra’s first bullet train projects to get off the ground

This picture has been used for representational purpose

Maharashtra's first intra-state high-speed bullet train rail projects, both starting from Mumbai - between Mumbai to Nagpur and other between Mumbai and Pune - may finally get on track. Minister of State for Railways Raosaheb Danve Patil on Monday took a review of the alignments and issued directives to complete the Detailed Project Report (DPR) in the first half of 2022.

Two corridors for Maharashtra - Mumbai-Nashik-Nagpur High-Speed Rail and Mumbai-Pune-Hyderabad High-Speed Rail corridor - have been proposed, with trains running at 300 kmph. On Monday, the National High Speed Rail Corporation team gave a presentation on both the projects to Danve, who told them to expedite the process.

"The 767-km-long Mumbai Nagpur project will be parallel to the new Samruddhi corridor coming up. It will cut down the journey time from Mumbai to Nagpur from 11 hours to a mere four hours. The Mumbai-Pune corridor aims to bring down the journey time from three hours to 90 minutes," an official said.

As per primary details, a Light Detection and Ranging Survey had been under process as part of primary preparations. The maximum speed of trains plying here will be 300 kmph with an average speed of 250 kmph. The rakes will have a capacity of 750 passengers.

The other high-speed rail corridors nationally include Delhi-Varanasi (865 km), Delhi-Ahmedabad (886 km), Chennai-Mysore (435 km), Delhi-Amritsar (459 km) and Varanasi-Howrah (760 km). According to officials, the cost of the project is yet to be worked out and will depend on the land acquisition process.