The Indian Railways may go for elevated tracks in areas where severe traffic congestion is adversely impacting trains’ schedules. The concept will be a great help in the introduction of high-speed trains that require fencing of tracks. It will be implemented in areas where there is no scope for further addition to tracks.
A top railway official told The Pioneer that elevated tracks will be useful in running trains at top speeds of 300-350 kmph without endangering the lives of people and animals. The idea of elevated tracks comes against the backdrop of satisfactory progress of work on the ambitious Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) project. The construction of Western and Eastern Corridors are in full swing for this project.
After a preliminary round of discussion, the Ministry has decided to prepare a feasibility report for the elevated tracks, which are expected to save both cost and time. Post-Independence, the Indian Railways has added 11,808-km tracks. The country presently has 65,808-km railway tracks.
“The elevated tracks will cater to the fast-moving ‘futuristic trains’, which are one of the dream projects of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Elevated tracks have been successfully implemented at some stretches of the Konkan Railways; in the tough terrains of Jammu & Kashmir; the North-East, and in Delhi through the Metro,” said a top railway official.
The Railway Ministry has already set up a corporation called High Speed Rail Corporation of India ltd to deal with the proposed high-speed rail corridor projects. The two-track elevated corridor which will be 15-20 metres above ground level will occasionally go underground and also run at ground level.
Globally, some of the dedicated high-speed tracks catering to speed over 200 kmph are the 515-km Tokyo-Shin-Osaka rail line, 409-km Paris Gare de lyon-Perrache railway line for 300 kmph built in 1981, the Wolfsburg-Berlin and Mannheim-Stuttgart high-speed railway lines in Germany. A majority of new rail infrastructure in China too is elevated.
“Presently, India is targeting only the lower end of 160-200 kmph speed of semi-high speed trains. Simultaneously, the focus is also to achieve over 200 kmph and beyond that in future. And for that, only elevated tracks are the answer. We are still trying our best to attain a speed of 150 kmph for Bhopal Shatabdi till Agra but in vain due to technical and asset failures,” said the official.
The railway official said that primarily the elevated tracks may be planned for the Diamond Quadrilateral Corridor covering Delhi-Mumbai-Chennai-Kolkata-Delhi as these cities have to be put on the high-speed rail corridor. Six corridors have been identified for technical studies on setting up of high-speed elevated rail corridors Delhi-Chandigarh-Amritsar, Pune-Mumbai-Ahmedabad, Hyderabad-Kazipet-Dornakal-Vijayawada-Chennai, Howrah-Haldia,Chennai-Bangalore-Coimbatore-Kochi-Thiruvan-anthapuram, Delhi-Agra-lucknow-Varanasi-Patna.