The Union Ministry of Railways has identified Nagpur-Bilaspur section as one of the nine corridors for raising the speed of passenger trains to 160/200 kmph, officials stated.
The details of the corridors are (i) Delhi-Agra (ii) Delhi- Chandigarh (iii) Delhi Kanpur (iv) Nagpur-Bilaspur (v) Chennai-Bengaluru-Mysore (vi) Mumbai-Goa (vii) Mumbai-Ahmedabad (viii) Chennai-Hyderabad, and (ix) Nagpur-Secunderabad.
Further, under the Quadrilateral network, 6 more corridors have been identified for feasibility studies for high speed rail connectivity to the four major metros and growth centers of the country. These are Delhi-Mumbai, Mumbai-Chennai, Chennai-Kolkata, Kolkata-Delhi, Delhi-Chennai and Mumbai-Kolkata.
Recently, a specific Directorate i.e. Mobility Directorate has been set up of which one of the primary objectives is to initiate measures for increasing the speed of trains. Besides, in Railway Budget 2016-17, a new category of train service for the reserved passengers ‘Tejas’ has been announced with the speed of 130 KMPH and above.
“Mission Raftar” declared in the Railway Budget 2016-17 entails doubling of average speed of freight trains and increasing the average speed of superfast Mail/Express trains by 25 kmph in the next five years.