NEW DELHI, Feb 16 – The proposed high speed rail in the western Indian rail corridor has received a boost with France agreeing to examine the possibility of running trains at 300 km per hour speed on the route, Press Trust of India (PTI) reported.
A high-level delegation headed by the chairman of France’s Railway is currently in Mumbai to discuss all pros and cons of the bullet train project on the proposed route, between the Indian cities of Mumbai and Ahmedebad said a senior Railway Ministry official.
Pre-feasibility study of the route has already been conducted by RITES in association with French consultant Systra. The 534-km-long Mumbai-Ahmedabad route is expected to be executed with the help of French technology as Indian Railways has signed an MoU with SNCF (French Railway) on Thursday.
According to the MoU, the Railways and SNCF will carry out jointly an operations and development feasibility project on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed rail corridor. The project will be funded by SNCF with a support from the French Ministry of Finance.
India Railways has identified seven routes for conducting pre- feasibility study for high speed corridors including the ones between the cities of Delhi-Agra-Patna, Howrah-Haldia, Chennai-Bangalore-Thiruvanathapuram and Mumbai-Ahmedabad.
Considered as a key infrastructure project, the Prime Minister Office is also monitoring the Mumbai-Ahmedabad project and has asked the Railways to constitute a project steering group to examine options for executing it.
The project will be executed on PPP model where state governments of Maharashtra and Gujarat are expected to be stakeholders along with IndianRailways. Besides high speed rail, Indian Railways will seek French cooperation on station development and modernisation of rail infrastructure and suburban train operation according to the agreement.
BERNAMA
