Japan, China in race to sell India their high-speed trains

[COLDHEARTED AVIATOR]

Nooooo...dont do that because according to Kejriwal ji High speed rail wil cost a ticket of 75000rs per person one side.

 

[Genesis]

I think all vendors should be invited. And they should be allowed to invest upon BOT basis. If the Chinese have poor quality of their products or if they are highly maintenancè intensive then they will be the ones to bear that cost. Also China does produce some quality products if the buyer is ready to pay the costs. And I am all for total opening of sector to anyone who is ready to invest in India. I am sure GoI will surely look into the experience and quality before allocating any route to a vendor

well, we do have the most extensive network in the world, so whether it is indeed of bad quality, it's not like we can hide it.

But I will say, our product is good as long as you want to pay for it.

HSR has been a huge success, after the initial set backs due to the initial rush and inexperience, today's HSR is definitely world class, we have already exported it to a few places.

In fact we just signed a 23 billion dollar deal with Thailand.

In terms of investment, you can't go bigger than China currently, Japan is a developed country, but it's not a huge country.


I will say however, if you can't do business with your enemy, your likelihood of success is not high. We are still doing massive business with the US, we are not exactly brunch buddies.

 

[ChinaToday]

Nice. Chose the best, India !

well couldn't agreed more...

China leads the world in High Speed Rail, and at a cost which is one third lower

having said that I think they will choose japan instead of china after all you know more poor in india than africa couple with iq81 is not there for no reason.

 

[Bang Galore]

The odds favour the Japanese. Their trains will be far more expensive but come with a good safety record & far more importantly, will come with very attractive financial offers.

 

[Chronos]

The odds favour the Japanese. Their trains will be far more expensive but come with a good safety record & far more importantly, will come with very attractive financial offers.

do we have the infrastructure to support it though?

 

[Bang Galore]

do we have the infrastructure to support it though?

Nope. Just another crazy harebrained idea. Not the time for us. Too expensive when we can't get the rest of the network working decently without accidents. These are just things that may serve as some aspirational showpieces at the most.

 

[Edison Chen]

LOL, whatever!

 

[HariPrasad]

I think that France had also shown its willingness to offer TGB express technology. I would rather say that keep somebody as the consultant and build high speed rail on our own. We already have the engines which can pull 18 coach train at 225 KM an hour. What we need is better track.

 

[Bang Galore]

Same could have been said about Metro rail project but it is successful. As long as HSR cater to high frequency routes like Delhi-Mumbai, it would be successful; if it is constructed for unviable route, it would run into red and fail.

Not the same. Metro atleast has a relevant rationale without many realistic alternatives. In my view HSR works well only when the distances involves are not so much as to make air travel more reasonable. i.e. sub 500-700 km km. More than that, it makes little sense. We are talking about $10 billion/Rs.60,000 crores per route, difficult to agree that it is a priority or that it can ever be economically successful.

 

[Indischer]

Nope. Just another crazy harebrained idea. Not the time for us. Too expensive when we can't get the rest of the network working decently without accidents. These are just things that may serve as some aspirational showpieces at the most.

I guess HSRs are indeed one way to bring about a big change in our rail network. Need to begin somewhere at least, before we can look at holistically changing the face of Indian railways.

 

[kalu_miah]

Imagine how India will be like in 5 years. When these trains are already in operation.



Are the Indian railways connected to Bangladesh's own railsystem ? Imagine when Bangladesh's Sonadia Deep Sea Port is built. This will connect the mountainous regions of India, China and Myanmar. Imagine the huge flow of trade in this region of the Subcontinent. A high speed rail connecting Calcutta to Chittagong and Dhaka region.

Wow!



@eastwatch , @UKBengali ,@kalu_miah , @Ravi Nair , @nair

Sometimes the tagging system does not work, I did not see this tag in my alert list, for some reason.

In answer to your question, I think its a great idea. The more connectivity and more economic integration for South Asia, the more prosperous the region will become. Hopefully Indian govt. will take a more positive attitude and refrain from interfering in our internal national matters, which will then improve India's image in Bangladesh and increase public support for infrastructure and economic integration with India.

China and Myanmar is much more welcome than India for infrastructure and economic integration, as China is more trusted and have a more positive image among Bangladeshi's as a result. Myanmar and Bangladesh has to solve Rohingya issue before we can improve relations, but the future of this relationship is great, because Myanmar provides us with direct land route to rest of South East Asia as well as China.

An integrated and conflict free Asia will bring prosperity and power to all of Asia and this is what Bangladesh and its people look forward to.

 

[thesolar65]

Quality matters and so do the depth of one's pocket!!. BTW India is a populous country, so the breaking even of the investment through low cost ticket even with high cost investment with good quality in the shortest time is high possibility.

Can some body tell which corridor is likely to break even at the shortest time?

 

[anant_s]

I will say however, if you can't do business with your enemy, your likelihood of success is not high.

1. China ain't an enemy.
2. In open competitive bidding, if China offers best price, the deal is her's.
3. A lot of large Thermal power plants here in India are using Chinese made capital equipments. Project managers putting faith in it there obviously know something about quality, we don't.
3. Where Japan might have an advantage (as in some other infra-projects) is funding through soft loans. But signals coming from Chinese officials is that they want business with India. Under current government, it is possibly the best opportunity.
5. The PC i'm using to type this message has almost everything made in China and it hasn't failed in past 3 years, i hope their trains too won't.

Quality matters and so do the depth of one's pocket!!. BTW India is a populous country, so the breaking even of the investment through low cost ticket even with high cost investment with good quality in the shortest time is high possibility.

Can some body tell which corridor is likely to break even at the shortest time?

Mumbai Ahemdabad.
Railways are actually looking at this in terms of passenger traffic and its paying preferences and capacity. Business centers which are at a distance of 300-400 kms, high speed trains actually are faster (in terms of point to point travel time) than airlines and also cheaper. So while initial investment in setting such a network is very costly, it an recover its cost in reasonably short time. Business travelers.
just for a comparison, Mumbai Ahemdabad First AC fare is ~Rs. 1800 and a cheap flight is ~Rs. 3000. If the fares can be between 2000-2200 range, people actually might prefer a fast train.

 

[anant_s]

People would prefer HSR over Airtravel, if travel time is less than 6-7 hour, ie at 200 Km/h, close to 1200-1400 Km

Absolutely, that actually is the case, people prefer a HST against a flight in relatively short distance travel owing to lower point to point time taken. The fares need to a reasonable to make it even more attractive.

ndian railway suffer from a problem of fecal matter discharge on it's platform while the train is stationary, not a problem of discharge in general.

The concept of Bio toilets is being implemented in a lot of trains which allow discharge to take place only when train has reached a certain speed, thereby avoiding problems of hygiene at stations.
Indian railways to have bio-toilets in all trains by 2022

 

[帅的一匹]

The odds favour the Japanese. Their trains will be far more expensive but come with a good safety record & far more importantly, will come with very attractive financial offers.

what if the price of the ticket going far beyond that nomoral Indians could afford? China has huge landmass that we do have enough experice to build HSR on different geologic structure, which the Japanese lack of .

do we have the infrastructure to support it though?

China could help out in infrastructure setup, TOT of HSR could be considered as well.