MUMBAI: Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Saturday the government will actively pursue the 508km bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, which has been facing challenges on the land acquisition front in Maharashtra. The FM also announced more Tejas-like trains, including 150 on a public- private partnership basis. Most of these trains will run on the Mumbai-Delhi and Howrah-Delhi routes as there will be capacity augmentation due to commissioning of dedicated freight corridors.
A Western Railway official said, "The Mumbai-Ahmedabad Tejas Express has been a huge hit. We can run more trains on Mumbai-Delhi and Mumbai-Jaipur routes. While Mumbai-Ahmedabad Tejas has chair cars, other private trains with over 16-hour journey will have sleeper berths." The railways have also approved a plan to improve tracks on these two routes to allow trains to run at 160kmph, which has been proposed as the speed limit for private services. To provide comfort to private players, the railways will not run regular services on the same route within 15 minutes of the scheduled operation of the private train.
A Western Railway official said, "The Mumbai-Ahmedabad Tejas Express has been a huge hit. We can run more trains on Mumbai-Delhi and Mumbai-Jaipur routes. While Mumbai-Ahmedabad Tejas has chair cars, other private trains with over 16-hour journey will have sleeper berths." The railways have also approved a plan to improve tracks on these two routes to allow trains to run at 160kmph, which has been proposed as the speed limit for private services. To provide comfort to private players, the railways will not run regular services on the same route within 15 minutes of the scheduled operation of the private train.
Get the app