Railway authorities are exploring the operation of Vande Bharat rakes on the popular Mumbai-Goa route. As a trial is currently underway, the question is whether travel by the Vande Bharat will be cheap and affordable for the common man?
Priyan R. Naik
A news report on Goa chief minister Pramod Sawant wanting the Vande Bharat train to be introduced on the Mumbai–Goa -Mangaluru route made interesting reading. Possibly he was looking at it from the viewpoint of trade and tourism, synergising train connectivity and air connectivity between Goa and Mangaluru, hoping to facilitate trading activity.
Currently, railway authorities are exploring the operation of a Vande Bharat train on the popular Mumbai-Goa route, which normally witnesses heavy rush right through the year; in fact, a train trial is already underway.
The Vande Bharat Express was first flagged off on the Delhi-Varanasi route by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in February 2019. An electric multiple-unit train operated by the Railways, it had achieved a maximum speed of 183 km/h during its testing phase. Due to railway track speed capacity and traffic constraints, however, the operating speed is limited to 160 km/h. Actually, the service speed is capped at 130 km/h since only a minuscule portion of India’s railway track network is capable of supporting high speeds, considering infrastructure and safety constraints. Newspapers are replete with how the train has knocked down several buffaloes en route, posting pictures of damage, and yet this is not even the fastest regularly scheduled train service in India today. When it comes to speed, the Gatimaan Express, running between Delhi and Jhansi, is much faster, touching 160 km/h.
Of the 756 km total track length of Konkan Railway, 156 km passes through Goa. The fastest permissible speed on the ‘Konkan Kanya’ express route is only 110 km/h; the average speed is a mere 54 km/h, although higher speeds were achieved under ‘test’ conditions. Even on the ‘Goa Rajdhani’ from Madgaon to Hazrat Nizamuddin, the top speed is 130 km/h with an average speed of only 64 km/h! Running a Vande Bharat is not going to make a substantial contribution.
Will travel by the Vande Bharat be cheap and affordable for the common man? Compare a single journey by A/C chair and executive chair between two trains on the 362 km Bengaluru–Chennai route, where the fares are Rs. 945 and Rs. 1,835 respectively. The same A/C chair on the iconic Brindavan Express or overnight travel by the Bengaluru-Chennai Mail in A/C 3-tier and AC 2-tier categories costs Rs. 540, Rs. 680 and Rs. 945 respectively. For an A/C chair car seat, Vande Bharat costs a whopping 74% more. Technological progress is surely welcome but what about affordability for the common man?
Furthermore, on the Chennai -Bengaluru route, Vande Bharat touches an average speed of only 75 km/h since various engineering works to fix gradients and curvatures on different sections are necessary. On this very route, passengers have taken special pride in traveling on the Shatabdi Express at average speeds of 72 km/h since 1994. Shatabdis were introduced across the country to commemorate the birth centenary of Jawaharlal Nehru and have been providing reliable service for decades. The speed difference has thus become a simple matter of choosing between two trains competing with each other!
So shouldn’t we take a pause and analyse why Goa needs the Vande Bharat? In the 1950s, it was much different for the Railways; the Integral Coach Factory (ICF) had just been set up in Chennai. When the then Chinese Premier Chou En Lai visited ICF, he had called it the pride of the east and wanted Chinese engineers to come to Chennai and learn how to make coaches. Today, in the quest for higher speeds, it is necessary to make a beeline for China!
In no way do I intend to undermine the sheer audacity and the chutzpah demonstrated by the ICF in designing and manufacturing the semi-high-speed, electric multiple unit Vande Bharat train over a period of 18 months. I am amazed at ICF’s effort in bringing out the first indigenous semi high-speed rolling stock from concept to design to engineering to manufacture to validation and testing, and all this in a remarkably short period. Ensuring superior train set speed coupled with comfort, better aesthetics, efficient maintainability, more acceleration and swiftness is a commendable achievement, and we must applaud Indian engineering expertise!
However, keeping pace with ‘speed’ is a different ball game, necessitating a different mindset, requiring redesign of not only the train set but also an improvement of the infrastructure and the overall ecosystem. Do we realise that Japan got its Shinkansen in the 1960s or China achieved similar speeds in the 1990s? Decades later our achievement is limited to a speed marginally higher than our very own Shatabdis!
Japan’s Shinkansen bullet trains have top speeds of 320 km/h. With their lightweight design that reduces the consumption of energy and results in less maintenance, and with its enviable track record in safety, reliability, efficiency and environmental friendliness, Japan arguably leads the world with its high-speed rail network. China adopted the import and technology transfer route and subsequently had its engineers re-design internal components, resulting in building and producing indigenous train-sets with design speeds of 350 km/h. Despite the celebrations, we must realise that India has a lot of catching up to do.
Whenever there is a huge gap in infrastructure or technology, there is also an opportunity to skip a milestone. It happened in the case of cellular network technology where India could directly roll out the 5G (5th generation) network. In the case of speeds on the railways too, India can leapfrog into the magnetic levitation (Maglev) technology. Today, a high-speed commercial train, the Shanghai Maglev, runs on non-conventional tracks reaching top speeds of 430 km/h. India should showcase a new national high-speed rail network with maglev technology on the Goa–Mumbai or the Goa Rajdhani routes.
For the infrastructure-handicapped Vande Bharat Express, with speed restricted to 130 km/h, there is a long road ahead. While the ICF team deserves kudos for its passion and sense of purpose in delivering the Vande Bharat train sets as per their commitment, the same can’t be said of our politicians and railway bureaucracy. They must focus on developing a rail ecosystem that will ensure higher speeds with equal emphasis on punctuality and safety. They must eschew bureaucratic procrastination and empire building, reduce stifling protocol, and focus on improving track infrastructure across the country.
Good roads, decongested cities, easy road access to sports complexes, even the National Waterway-68 that reduces the distance between Vasco and Panjim by 9 km, enabling passengers to complete their journey in a mere 20 minutes, or travelling on the 4 lane bridge, opened for traffic from Vasco to Panaji, all make for an amazing experience. Connectivity and roadways development get a lot of attention in Goa; so naturally most Goans are fond of road travel. In this scenario, wouldn’t a Vande Bharat and high speed trains be low priority for most Goans?
Would I opt for traveling by the Vande Bharat to Goa? Recently, I had a pleasant enough experience travelling by the Vasco da Gama Express from Bengaluru to Goa. Although the average speed of the train was 47 km/h, the maximum permitted speed on a few stretches was 110 km/h. The journey itself was extremely restful and comfortable, despite the compartments being old and water in the washrooms smelling rusty. The train arrived early in the morning, on time. It was nice seeing workers on the platform up and about, keeping the station spotless and clean. The train was shunted on to one of the interior platforms, forcing passengers to make a beeline for two small over bridges, inadequate and unsafe for the huge crowd that was trying to use them all at once. Another priority area that both the politicians and Railway bureaucracy must focus on even as they flag off more and more Vande Bharats on different routes!
(Priyan R. Naik is a columnist
and independent journalist based in Bengaluru)