Bullet train for only Dhaka-Ctg route: PM

[Indos]

It still is an unnecessary expense for a relatively poor country like BD.

We need to look at the geography of BD. Please see map below:

Pretty much all cities are within 2-250 km of the capital Dhaka.

Even with a "high-speed" railway of 160km/h maximum speed you are looking at most a 2 hour journey from nearly every city in BD to Dhaka.

Like I said before I would spend that 12 billion US dollars on upgrading all the rail lines connecting all major cities to 160km/h and then BD will have a fast and efficient rail network connecting all the major cities of BD.

As @bluesky said keep as much of the work in-house and BD may even be able to get ToT from countries like Indonesia(@Indos ) to build the hundreds of train carriages that will be required to serve the new network.

If decades down the line BD becomes a rich country, then yeah go for this but now is not the time.

Yup bullet train or HSR is not worth it for medium distance, saving 1-2 hours is not that much. Indonesia HSR from Jakarta-Bandung (medium distance) can be realized because Chinese investment and if I am not mistaken it will use Built-Operate-Transfer mechanism. In essence the financial burden will be taken by Chinese. And our state owned companies are also part of the consortium and will use this project to learn to build HSR system and its infrastructure.

Jakarta-Surabaya (long distance) will use semi speed train with 250 km train since current speed (90km/h) requires 9 hours journey. And government doesnt rush to start the project and waiting for 250 km speed train prototype program that is currently jointly developed by INKA and BPPT (Gov Research Agency).

 

[mmr]

Lol. Good luck.

 

[vishwambhar]

Yes and no. I also wouldn't want long distance bullet trains in India yet. The reason is cost estimation will be costlier than airlines for long distance bullet trains. China still hasn't made a single year of profit except for one line in all her years of operations of Bullet trains.
We should concentrate on smaller routes where the return on investment is higher for the investments. Like Delhi Chandigarh, Bangalore Chennai Hyderabad, Mumbai Pune etc.

Very true... in my honest opinion bullet train in India too is waste of money even if it's a large country..... flight will be cheaper and time saving....

This concept is not for poor countries like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan....our priorities are different.....

It's vèry good for filthy rich and completely developed countries like Japan, south Korea, France, Germany etc....

 

[Arulmozhi Varman]

Very true... in my honest opinion bullet train in India too is waste of money even if it's a large country..... flight will be cheaper and time saving....

This concept is not for poor countries like India, Bangladesh, Pakistan....our priorities are different.....

It's vèry good for filthy rich and completely developed countries like Japan, south Korea, France, Germany etc....

For small countries it's perfectly fine. You save money if you can complete a travel in 45min instead of 3 hours. But what do you save in Delhi Chennai or Delhi Mumbai route. Flights will be lot cheaper. Ideally we should concentrate only on small routes where return on investment is higher and high frequency of trains can be run per day. And slowly we can extend over time.

 

[bluesky]

As @bluesky said keep as much of the work in-house and BD may even be able to get ToT from countries like Indonesia(@Indos ) to build the hundreds of train carriages that will be required to serve the new network.

Great!! We have waited for 72 years and now it is time that BD builds its train coaches and goods/freight carriages for the existing lines by getting technical collaboration from foreign companies. However, I see hundreds of such imports from India, China and Indonesia (our very brotherly countries, they say) every year that causes celebration by our PDF brats. They term it as development.

I personally believe that any such govt initiative will backfire and the railway will keep on piling losses every year. Ours is a govt that cannot even run a simple civil administration , but is running train transport business and talking about fast trains when even slow trains remain stuck in bureaucratic tangling. Very peculiar country.

 

[SylhetiBDeshiAmerican]

Instead of another prestige project, how about solving the curse of annual water logging? The so-called bullet train line would be built by foreign companies with foreign money and technology. Many people believe this is a case of high development when our own people are intellectually incapable to contribute.

For me, all that glitters is not gold. So, first improve the Dhaka-Ctg rly line by constructing double track by the BD people themselves before indulging with a non starter project.

Bullet trains belong to a different league of countries who have technological superiority. BD being an LDC and technologically inferior country does not belong to that exclusive group of bullet trains.

I agree, there are other pressing infrastructural needs in the country where money can be spent more wisely and situation also demands it.

 

[Nike]

Great!! We have waited for 72 years and now it is time that BD builds its train coaches and goods/freight carriages for the existing lines by getting technical collaboration from foreign companies. However, I see hundreds of such imports from India, China and Indonesia (our very brotherly countries, they say) every year that causes celebration by our PDF brats. They term it as development.

I personally believe that any such govt initiative will backfire and the railway will keep on piling losses every year. Ours is a govt that cannot even run a simple civil administration , but is running train transport business and talking about fast trains when even slow trains remain stuck in bureaucratic tangling. Very peculiar country.

I read somewhere in Indonesia local newspaper, PT INKA had offered offset by building modern maintenance depo, training of Bd worker at INKA workshop and including production of several fast moving spare parts locally in Bd workshop (surely after Bd set up necessary tooling tools and workout units by INKA assistance ) . But this offer still not going accepted by BD sides as they need to learn offer from other vendor.

 

[Bilal9]

I read somewhere in Indonesia local newspaper, PT INKA had offered offset by building modern maintenance depo, training of Bd worker at INKA workshop and including production of several fast moving spare parts locally in Bd workshop (surely after Bd set up necessary tooling tools and workout units by INKA assistance ) . But this offer still not going accepted by BD sides as they need to learn offer from other vendor.

This is hopeful news.

At least Bangladesh authorities are trying to become more self-sufficient in the supply of rolling stock, if not locomotives themselves.

 

[UKBengali]

Great!! We have waited for 72 years and now it is time that BD builds its train coaches and goods/freight carriages for the existing lines by getting technical collaboration from foreign companies. However, I see hundreds of such imports from India, China and Indonesia (our very brotherly countries, they say) every year that causes celebration by our PDF brats. They term it as development.

I personally believe that any such govt initiative will backfire and the railway will keep on piling losses every year. Ours is a govt that cannot even run a simple civil administration , but is running train transport business and talking about fast trains when even slow trains remain stuck in bureaucratic tangling. Very peculiar country.

Better late than never.

Anyway do you think that decades or even at the start of the last decade it made much sense for an extremely poor country like BD to try to assemble and then manufacture it's own train carriages since demand was rather low?
As has already been explained by posters like @Bilal9 it would have been far more expensive for BD years ago to try to get ToT and then assemble those train carriages in BD with a view to manufacture later on. BD would have needed to place an order for many potentially billions of US dollars that it simply did not have.

India can do it as it has vast scale despite the fact that it has been a poor country and Indonesia not only has higher population but also was and still is much richer than BD.

The difference now is that BD is a wealthier country compared to before and it is finally able to spend serious amounts of money on infrastructure compared to only 10 years ago - 6% as opposed to 3% of GDP.
BD is now in a position where it can spend 10 billion dollars or more on a single project(Roopur nuclear plant or this proposed "bullet-train" line from Dhaka to Chittagong).

I hope that even though BD government can somehow find the money to fund this 12 billion US dollar line, it instead follows my line of thinking in upgrading all city-connecting railway lines to maybe 160km/h maximum and then works with a country like Indonesia to get ToT to build the carriages that will be required for these newer upgraded lines - think there is already discussions about something similar as mentioned by @Nike.

 

[bluesky]

I read somewhere in Indonesia local newspaper, PT INKA had offered offset by building modern maintenance depo, training of Bd worker at INKA workshop and including production of several fast moving spare parts locally in Bd workshop (surely after Bd set up necessary tooling tools and workout units by INKA assistance ) . But this offer still not going accepted by BD sides as they need to learn offer from other vendor.

However, no news in BD newspapers. Could it be because the BAL (or, say, BNP) politicians are not eager to accept any offer that will cause closing the source of their bribe income that they regularly receive from the importing companies?

In the usual case in another country the govt would have asked the importers to tie up with the Indonesian company to set up assembling factories. However, this is Golden Bangladesh where many top people are not patriotic and they do not want the country to really develop.

This is the reason that our AM/PM always talk of projects that are non-starter to begin with. Bullet train is just one such thing.

 

[Nike]

However, no news in BD newspapers. Could it be because the BAL (or, say, BNP) politicians are not eager to accept any offer that will cause closing the source of their bribe income that they regularly receive from the importing companies?

In the usual case in another country the govt would have asked the importers to tie up with the Indonesian company to set up assembling factories. However, this is Golden Bangladesh where many top people are not patriotic and they do not want the country to really develop.

This is the reason that our AM/PM always talk of projects that are non-starter to begin with. Bullet train is just one such thing.

Well at least your own government had initiative to try to modernize your railway system including to revamp the signal system, management of integrated system units and so on. PT KAI, PT LEN, PT INKA had giving Bd officials more picture about Indonesia own experiences to modernize Indonesia railway system, Indonesia is not rich country to begin with so our railway system model can be put into consideration to shape Bd future model.

https://ekonomi.bisnis.com/read/201...len-kantongi-proyek-us25-juta-dari-bangladesh

https://www.inka.co.id/berita/736

 

[bluesky]

Well at least your own government had initiative to try to modernize your railway system including to revamp the signal system, management of integrated system units and so on. PT KAI, PT LEN, PT INKA had giving Bd officials more picture about Indonesia own experiences to modernize Indonesia railway system, Indonesia is not rich country to begin with so our railway system model can be put into consideration to shape Bd future model.

https://ekonomi.bisnis.com/read/201...len-kantongi-proyek-us25-juta-dari-bangladesh

https://www.inka.co.id/berita/736

Exactly what the GoB should do . It should set priorities and keep on achieving each milestone. However, our people speak about jumping toward bullet train without doing all other prior works.

This is why other than textile sector, which is controlled by the private people, no other sector especially those under the govt bureaucrats could spring up.

 

[Bilal9]

Better late than never.

Anyway do you think that decades or even at the start of the last decade it made much sense for an extremely poor country like BD to try to assemble and then manufacture it's own train carriages since demand was rather low?
As has already been explained by posters like @Bilal9 it would have been far more expensive for BD years ago to try to get ToT and then assemble those train carriages in BD with a view to manufacture later on. BD would have needed to place an order for many potentially billions of US dollars that it simply did not have.

India can do it as it has vast scale despite the fact that it has been a poor country and Indonesia not only has higher population but also was and still is much richer than BD.

The difference now is that BD is a wealthier country compared to before and it is finally able to spend serious amounts of money on infrastructure compared to only 10 years ago - 6% as opposed to 3% of GDP.
BD is now in a position where it can spend 10 billion dollars or more on a single project(Roopur nuclear plant or this proposed "bullet-train" line from Dhaka to Chittagong).

I hope that even though BD government can somehow find the money to fund this 12 billion US dollar line, it instead follows my line of thinking in upgrading all city-connecting railway lines to maybe 160km/h maximum and then works with a country like Indonesia to get ToT to build the carriages that will be required for these newer upgraded lines - think there is already discussions about something similar as mentioned by @Nike.

Manufacturing High speed railway coaches is not difficult, given a proper technology partner. What is interesting, is that starting with assembly, it is also significantly cheaper to buy for existing Railway like BR in our case. Later we can reduce imported components substituted with local ones and do manufacturing from raw sheet steel or sheet aluminium/aluminium profiles for welded framework. Some components (like wheels and bogie components) may need to be imported for a while before demand shifts the manufacture to locally made bogies.

I am suggesting, like other countries, that this JV company should not have any influence from BR itself. BR administration is too corrupted and can't be relied on - not to influence manufacture of products using low quality components using cheap shortcuts.

One of the most appropriate foreign technical partners for this proposed railway coach manufacturing company, besides PT INKA, is Hyundai Rotem.

We already have a strong relationship with this company as a vendor of our modern Meter Gauge locomotives, which we have quite a few of, supplied over the last two and a half decades. Rotem manufactures most high speed rail coaches for Korea Rail, which has four different classes of rail service, from slowest to fastest non-stop. The fastest rail coach in Korea was/is identical to the French TGV and slowly, local indigenous content has been raised to near 100% for electrical locomotive power for these Bullet trainsets.

Needless to say, rail-coaches themselves in Korea are all locally manufactured by Rotem, which we can also do, given proper setup. This is not at all difficult, given local expertise and available skillsets such as for building ships in our over two hundred plus large shipyards and thousands of smaller informal shipyards.

Only the bribing of Bangladeshi rail-ministers have to be handled.

The rise of Rotem as a global supplier of rolling stock has been rather meteoric and spectacular to watch, they not only supply all of Asia and Europe, but have set up manufacturing for Metro commuter trains in Philadelphia. LA Metro (subway) and commuter rail coaches (MetroLink) are increasing sourced from that factory in Philly. The fact that the Koreans have captured the highly regulated US train coach market says a lot about their product quality control and ambitions.

New Rotem Metrolink coaches in LA back in 2014. Many more have been added in batches since.

Rotem has JV factories in India, Iran and Turkey, just to name a few. We should negotiate with Rotem (and PT Inka) to set up our own rail-coach factory, at least assemble rail-coaches to our local specs.

Here is the story of a recent factory set up in Iran in 2017
Iran, South Korea in €720m Rail Deal
5th December 2017 in Industry, Security

Iran Rail Industries Development Company (IRICO) and South Korea’s Hyundai Rotem have signed a contract to jointly manufacture diesel rail-cars for public transport in suburban Tehran.

The €720-million contract was signed during a ceremony in the Iranian capital, Tehran, attended by Iran’s Minister of Roads and Urban Development Abbas Akhoundi.

This is the IRICO commuter rail design

Hyundai Rotem will produce 150 cars in South Korea, with another 300 to be assembled in Iran by IRICO under a technology transfer agreement.

Delivery will take place over 6-and-a-half years.

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Rotem also set up a JV in Turkey named EuRotem sometime ago to manufacture high speed rail equipment.

Eurotem Railway Carriage Factory

Project Name: Eurotem Railway Carriage Factory
Location: Adapazari, Turkey
Completion Date: November 2007
Duration: 11 months
Client: Hyundai Eurotem AS
General Description: 9.800 sqm factory, 2.000 sqm office building

Even Myanmar is importing Semi-Knockdown kits from China (SiFang) and are assembling them in two different factories. We have a tradition of manufacturing these items locally for the last hundred years (way before Korea was a developed economy), and we are still importing. We should be ashamed...

 

[DalalErMaNodi]

Why don't BAL superheros first fix the roads leading to and in Chittagong, every rainy season entire streets get flooded causing much delay to the movement of goods to and fro Chittagong, not to mention the port or is this another prestige project to line their pockets and keep fools happy.

 

[Homo Sapiens]

Why don't BAL superheros first fix the roads leading to and in Chittagong, every rainy season entire streets get flooded causing much delay to the movement of goods to and fro Chittagong, not to mention the port or is this another prestige project to line their pockets and keep fools happy.

True, I feel ashame seeing the road condition of our 2nd largest city. Very few roads in Chattogram are in good quality or condition. I do not see any 8-12 lane roads, most of the roads has no accompanying footpath or very little of it. Road side condition are absolutely pathetic in most of the places. Road side dump, dust, mud, hawkers, numerous rickshaws, electric wire plexus made appalling look and very difficult to walk. Besides govt. I think the city administration are also a big failure in Chattogram. They can not even spend the city budget money. Every year, most of the budget spending remain unfulfilled and they just add those unspent money to next years city budget despite the pathetic condition of roads. They seems to be totally oblivious on how the city looks or how to alleviate the suffering of commuters and pedestrians.