Chandigarh: Imagine you have to travel for less than two hours to reach Chandigarh from Delhi. This is soon going to be possible as Indian Railways plans to roll out the desi version of Bullet trains in the next one year. Bullet trains remain a dream for the country due to high costs involved in putting up the infrastructure for such high speed trains. But, now Desi trains running at an average speed of 130 km per hour bring hope. These semi-high-speed trains will run at a speed, nearly double that clocked by Rajdhani and Shatabdi expresses, two of the fastest trains in the country at present.
Initially, railways plans to run these trains on three routes— Delhi-Chandigarh, Delhi-Lucknow and Delhi-Bhopal — by the end of this year or early next year at an estimated economical cost of R2.5 crore per km. This is much lower than the cost of around R200 crore per km for building high-speed rail networks, according to an estimate by RITES, the railways’ consulting arm.
The second phase of these trains will be introduced in southern and eastern regions, including Ernakulam-Thiruvananthapuram, Hyderabad-Chennai and Howrah-Haldia.
DESI BULLET TRAINS to run on Delhi-Chandigarh, Delhi-Lucknow, Delhi-Bhopal route - daily.bhaskar.com
The network of high-speed trains has been present in many parts of the world, including the Europe and Japan, for long. In recent decades, similar networks have been built in China and Korea.