Mumbai : Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail Corridor (Bullet Train) would most probably be on an elevated corridor instead of on the ground, Additional Chief Secretary of Transport and Ports Gautam Chatterjee told FPJ here on Thursday. The feat is expected to hike the cost of the project by a whooping Rs 10000 crore, he added.
This would increase the cost by Rs 10,000 crore
Elevated corridor will remove the problems of acquiring vast tracks of land, build underpasses for cattle, people and transport to pass and also the entire corridor will not be required to be fenced in order to prevent cattle and people from crossing over, Chatterjee said.
Ministry of Railways has turned down the state request to extend one arm of the corridor to Nashik, Chatterjee added. The project will be jointly implemented by State Governments of Maharashtra, Gujarat and the Ministry of Railways. A Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) is being set up to implement the project. Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA) is to offer a soft loan for the project, he said.
As per statistics and information available, the entire project would cost around Rs 98,000 crore. Now with the corridor to be built on elevated structure the cost will increase by another Rs 10,000 crore. Out of the total project cost JICA is expected to fund 81 per cent of the cost (that is about Rs 79,165 crore). The top speed on the 505 km elevated corridor will be between 300 to 350 Kmph. The project feasibility was jointly conducted by RITES, Italferr and Systra in July 2015.
The high speed train corridor will have 11 stations on the route with seven stations in Maharashtra alone. At present the proposed route contains stations and depots at – Mumbai Bandra-Kurla Complex, Thane, a depot and workshop at Thane, Pune, Virar, a maintenance depot and Dahanu. In Gujarat the proposed route will be as follows – Vapi, a maintenance depot, Valsad, Surat, a depot at Surat, Bharuch, a maintenance depot, Vadodra, Anand or Nadiad, depot at Ahmedabad and terminate at Ahmedabad. There will be 32 services operated on the route.
