Railways, India: high speed trains
This is a collection of articles archived for the excellence of their content. |
Contents |
A backgrounder
2018: Gatimaan Express
Arvind Chauhan, Gatimaan Exp makes first trip to Gwalior, February 20, 2018: The Times of India
The Delhi-Agra Gatimaan Express, India’s fastest train with a maximum speed of 160kmph, reached Gwalior, the first step in its proposed expansion towards Jhansi and Gwalior. Gatimaan — which covers the 187km run between Delhi’s Nizamuddin and Agra’s Cantt stations, in 100 minutes — completed the 306km journey from Delhi to Gwalior in 3 hours and 15 minutes. The fastest train for the stretch so far was Rajdhani, which takes just under 4 hours.
2018: 180 kmph
Indigenous Train 18 now fastest in India, December 27, 2018: The Times of India
From: Indigenous Train 18 now fastest in India, December 27, 2018: The Times of India
Train 18, an indigenously developed semi-high speed train, officially became the first train in India to cruise at a sustained speed of 180kmph, making it the fastest train in the country, railway minister Piyush Goyal announced.
The chief commissioner of railway safety (CCRS) has given the goahead for the train to run at a maximum speed of 160kmph with certain conditions paving the way for its commercial operation. The conditions include providing “sturdy fencing” all along the track to avoid mishaps.
The CCRS in its communication to the railway board has said, “Railway shall ensure provision of sturdy fencing at vulnerable location on need basis for operation up to 130 kmph. For speed beyond 130 kph and upto 160 kmph, provision of sturdy fencing all along the track shall be ensured.” It has laid down 21 conditions railways must comply with to run at maximum speed of up to 160kmph.
The clearance from CCRS is a pre-requisite for any train with new technology to start service.
Railway ministry sources said the train speed can also go up where the track condition is superior. With a video clip, Goyal tweeted, “Need for Speed: Train 18 seen cruising at 180kmph, officially becoming the fastest train in India.”
The first such train manufactured in India at a cost of about Rs 100 crore is scheduled to ply between Delhi and Varanasi via Allahabad. PM Narendra Modi will flag off the train. The date of starting the service is undecided.
Bullet train
From: February 6, 2019: The Hindu
See graphic:
Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train, some brief details
2019/ accorded wildlife clearance for Thane Creek Flamingo Wildlife Sanctuary and the Sanjay Gandhi National Park
Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan-led panel gives nod.
A committee, chaired by Union Environment Minister Harsh Vardhan, has accorded wildlife clearance to the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high speed train corridor that encroaches upon a flamingo sanctuary and the Sanjay Gandhi National Park, the home to leopards, in Mumbai.
The proposal involves diversion of 3.2756 ha of forestland from the Thane Creek Flamingo Wildlife Sanctuary and 97.5189 ha of land close to the boundary of the forest’s protected area.
The project for one of India’s first ‘bullet trains’ was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe in Ahmedabad in September, 2017. It is expected to be ready by 2022.
A wildlife clearance is a critical part of the forest clearance process. A person privy to the process said forest clearance wasn’t part of the original agenda of the meeting.
The TCF in Thane, Mumbai, came into being August 2015 and the 1,690-hectare bird haven — 896 hectares of mangrove forests and 794 hectares of a water-body — is on the western bank of the creek, between the Airoli and the Vashi bridges connecting Mumbai and Navi Mumbai.
Apart from the creek, the proposal also involves diverting 32.75 ha of forestland and 77.30 ha of non-forestland from Sanjay Gandhi National Park and from 0.6902 ha of forestland and 4.7567 ha of non-forest land from Tungareshwar Wildlife Sanctuary.
While according clearance, the National Board of Wildlife-- the apex body tasked with according permissions to allow forest land to be diverted for industrial development-- has laid pre-conditions for the bullet train project. These include paying Rs 10 crore (2% of 500 crore—the component of the project in Mumbai) for habitat improvement of the sanctuary, barricading the work site to ensure that no debris fall outside the project area and ‘…providing site and funds for penal plantation of at least 5 times the number of mangroves plants anticipated to be lost in this project..’
Largely funded by a soft loan by Japan, the Rs 1 trillion Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project has a track-length of 508 km, and will originate at the Bandra Kurla Complex, Mumbai and terminate at the Sabarmati, in Gujarat. The length across the State of Maharashtra will be 155.64 km 4.3 km across Dadra & Nagar Haveli. The total length across the state of Gujarat would 348.2 km and would pass through the districts of Ahmedabad, Kheda, Anand, Vadodara, Bharuch, Surat, Navsari, and Valsad in Gujarat.
As in 2022
Rajesh Sharma, Oct 4, 2022: The Times of India
The new railway time table promises that express trains will reach their destinations faster by 10-70 minutes. Despite spending Rs 2.5 lakh crore in 2008-19 to improve track infra, why are our trains still chugging along at a sedate 55km/h?
This story was originally published on April 14, 2022. When India’s first Rajdhani Express was flagged off on March 3, 1969, it took 17 hours to cover the distance of 1,450km from New Delhi to Howrah. Fast forward 53 years and guess what the travel time is now? 17 hours.
In the case of Indian Railways, the more things change, the more they stay the same. The Comptroller and Auditor General (CAG) of India has found in an audit that despite spending crores of rupees to upgrade rail infrastructure, nothing much has been done to cut travel time.
In May 2007, the Railways decided that if the average speed of a train in both up and down directions is a minimum 55km/h on broad gauge and 45km/h on metre gauge, then it would be treated as a superfast train. Despite the low benchmark, there has been no change in the classification of superfast trains since 2007.
What the CAG found
- Despite investing ₹2.5 lakh crore on track infrastructure from 2008-09 to 2018-19, the Railways has failed to improve its punctuality and reduce travel time
- The average speed of mail/express and freight trains is still around 50km/h and 23km/h, respectively
* Out of 478 superfast trains, the scheduled speed of 123 trains was less than 55km/h. There hasn’t been much improvement in the speed of Shatabdi and Rajdhani trains since the 1970s.
- Amid little improvement in average speeds, the travel time has increased over the past few years — so, overall punctuality has declined
* The number of complaints lodged in the system for late running of superfast trains in 2015-16, 2016-17, 2017-18 and 2018-19 was 9,112, 20,025, 35,793 and 40,077, respectively
- When it comes to mail and express trains, only 29.64% reached on time and 20.17% arrived before time during 2016-19. The remaining 50.19% of the trains were delayed
Mission Raftaar
The Railways introduced Mission Raftaar in 2016-17 in a bid to increase the average speed of mail/express trains from 50km/h to 75km/h and double the average speed of freight trains to 50km/h by 2021-22. However, the average speed of mail/express trains and goods trains in 2019-20 was only 50.6km/h and 23.6km/h, respectively.
The Railways has adopted rolling stock with the rated capacity of 100-160km/h and tracks with a maximum permissible speed of 100-130km/h in certain sections. However, the CAG audit revealed that the scheduled speed of 97.9% of mail/express trains was below 75km/h.
The MPS factor
The target of achieving a speed of 160km/h for passenger trains and 100km/h for freight trains was fixed many times between 1960 and 2016-17. The timeline was constantly revised. However, the target has not been achieved.
Thus, even after years of planning, there has been no change in the maximum permissible speed (MPS) of Rajdhani and Shatabdi trains since the 1970s. Rajdhani/Shatabdi trains and other mail/express trains have an MPS of 130km/h and 110km/h, respectively.
At the end of 2019, out of 9,890km of Golden Quadrilateral/Diagonal routes, only 3,030km (30.6%) are fit for operation at 130km/h.
After 30 years of research and development, the Railways introduced the semi-high-speed Gatimaan Express in 2016. However, its top speed was only 160km/h, which exposed the limitations of the existing network. So, the Railways decided to build a high-speed rail (HSR) system with Japanese collaboration and construction began in 2018. Trains on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad HSR are expected to travel at speeds of 320-350km/h, thereby reducing the travel time between Mumbai and Ahmedabad to three-and-a-half hours compared to the current eight hours.
A giant leap forward
As India struggles to boost the speed of its trains, China’s success offers a template on how to do it. Before 1997, trains in China used to chug along at a speed of just 80-100km/h. After six rounds of national railway speed acceleration campaigns between 1997 and 2007, their speed has accelerated to 120-300km/h. Now, China’s fastest train covers the 1,021km between capital Beijing and Nanjing at an average speed of 317.7 km/h, completing the journey in just three hours and 13 minutes.
China also modelled its high-speed rail system on Japan’s Shinkansen (bullet train), which began operations in 1964. Today, Japan has a network of nine high-speed rail lines serving 22 cities, with three more lines in development.
It is the busiest high-speed rail service in the world, carrying more than 4,20,000 passengers on a typical weekday. Its trains clock speeds of up to 320km/h and officials boast that in more than 50 years of operation, there have been no passenger fatalities or injuries due to accidents.
While there is no single international standard for high-speed rail, new lines offering speeds in excess of 250km/h, and existing lines in excess of 200km/h are generally considered to be high speed. Many countries in Europe and Asia have developed high-speed rail for passengers, while some have built similar lines for freight trains. Apart from Japan and China, countries with a high-speed rail system include Germany, Italy, France, Taiwan, Turkey, South Korea and Spain. The maximum speed on offer is 250-350km/h.
