Indian Railways on Tuesday set up a High Speed Rail Corporation (HSRC) to undertake study and explore the possibilities of running high speed trains in India. The HSRC will be a subsidiary of Rail Vikas Nigam limited and will be headed by its RVNl CMD Satish Agnihotri.
The HSRC has been formed to develop High Speed Rail (HSR) Corridors in India to run passenger trains at speeds up to 350 km per hour. It will undertake the project activities such as preparation of project related studies, preparation of the technical standards for HSR Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor and any other corridor decided by the Government.
It will provide support to Ministry of Railways and Government of India in finalizing the financial and implementation models. Indian Railways has already undertaken pre-feasibility studies of seven high speed corridors. A preliminary study for Mumbai-Ahemdabad route has estimated its cost to be around Rs 65,000 crore.
“Today, we started the process. later on, its (HSRC) terms and condition, appointment of members, other things will be decided,” Railway Minister Mallikarjun Kharge said after launching the HSRC at the two-day global conference on high speed rail travel here.
Most countries consider high speed capability to be in the range of 250 to 300 km per hour and the Minister admitted that a country like India has its own set of associated issues. “Thus, leveraging Rolling stock technologies may provide a lower cost solution to meet the immediate needs of achieving speeds of 160 to 200 kmph and that too on the existing track,” Kharge said.
He pointed out that the costlier and time consuming solution of providing a separate dedicated track with fencing becomes inescapable for speeds above 200 km per hour. “Therefore, the focus of this conference is to consider achieving higher speed trains in the range of 160 to 200 kmph with marginal inputs in the existing infrastructure, besides given the financial constraints and issues related to land acquisition and track fencing, as an interim step,” he said.
Claiming that Railway’s our primary focus has been to provide a mass mode of safe, reliable and affordable transport; the minister admitted it was a natural aspiration of the people that Indian Railways provide them high speed rail travel. Indian Railways had attained speeds of 120 kmph on its Mumbai and Kolkata Rajdhani Express trains way back in 1973. In the year 1998 the Bhopal Shatabdi express became India’s fastest train attaining a speed of 140 kmph which was further increased to 150 kmph in 2006.
However, striking a cautionary note, Railway Minister said, “One should not buy horses because horse shoes are freely available”. Hinting at the easy availability of high speed technology and equipment, Kharge said, “We should not get even if it is available for free. Some time they sell it to buyers saying it is cheap. We should think whether it suits or not even if it is free or cheap”. Many advanced countries are in the race to provide technology and expertise to railways in the proposed high speed train project.
Addressing the conference, Chairman, Railway Board Arunendra Kumar said, “We are forming the High Speed Rail Corporation, a subsidiary of RVNl, to take up the necessary steps required in raising the speed of trains.” HSRC will be followed by the constitution of the High Speed Rail Authority (HSRA) soon. Satish Agnihotri, the Chairman and Managing Director of RVNl will also be heading the HSRC. It will prepare project related studies, technical standards, support Government in finalising financial models.