Centre opens door for private rlys: Mega-speed trains soon

Centre opens door for private rlys: Mega-speed trains soon

FPJ BureauUpdated: Thursday, May 30, 2019, 01:36 PM IST
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NEW DELHI :  The Government has quietly opened the doors for private railways in India. An invitation has gone out from the Indian Railways to the foreign players to bid for running the high-speed trains at 500 km per hour, faster than the proposed bullet train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, on own tracks with own fare structure.

The ministry has issued a global “expression of interest” notice, inviting response by September 6 on operating these trains on the elevated tracks with the magnetic levitation (Maglev) technology that facilitates the trains to run at very high speed. The notice says the minimum speed of these trains shall be 350 km per hour and four routes offered to begin with are Mumbai-Nagpur, New Delhi-Chandigarh, Bengaluru-Chennai and Hyderabad-Chennai.

Since all these routes are heavily congested as trains are running on them at nearly 120% saturation, Maglev trains will be a big respite for the passengers, a ministry official said. He said the modalities and specifications for the project to be experimented on the revenue-sharing basis will be finalised after studying the interests shown.

At present, the Maglev technology is used in countries like China, Japan, Germany, South Korea and the US. China is plying the Maglev trains between Shanghai city and its airport, covering a distance of about 38 km.

A Railway Board official insisted that this was not privatisation of the Railways but involving the private companies to build and operate alike the civil aviation sector allowing privately-built airports and private airlines.

He said the Maglev trains will be in tune with Prime Minister Modi”s vision of taking the railways to the age of high speed trains.

He hoped that the foreign firms will be able to bring the external sources of revenue for the projects to overcome the Railways” handicap of being cash strapped in not able to expand the services to meet the demand.

The proposal floated through the “expression of interest notice” says the Railways will provide land for the purpose while rest of the requirements, including tracks, railway stations, platforms, signal system, fare structure and the time table, will be left up to the firms undertaking the projects to decide.

The notice says: “The Indian Government shall provide land for the 200 to 500 kilometre-long project while the company that will eventually bag the contract will be expected to design the Maglev train and build an elevated track for running the train; all this only after it successfully gives a demonstration of Maglev systems over a distance of 10 to 15 km.”

Only to make the Maglev trains financially viable, the notice says the Railways will allow the private operators to introduce the non-fare revenue models like wi-fi, movies, food and other add-on services to be charged from the passengers.

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