Rail connectivity from the Capital to other States is likely to improve further, with Railway Minister Sadanand Gowda announcing new semi high speed, premium and express trains for the city in the railway budget.
While the Railway Minister has proposed high speed trains on nine sectors, three of them will be serving Delhi. Nine other long distance trains and one local train have also been proposed to connect Delhi with different parts of the country.
“While bullet trains will require completely new infrastructure, higher speed for existing trains will be achieved by upgrading the present network. Hence, an effort will be made to increase the speed of trains to 160-200 kmph in select sectors so as to significantly reduce travel time between major cities,” Mr. Gowda said in his budget speech.
While the Railways successfully conducted trial of a semi-high-speed train on the Delhi-Agra route, officials said running a higher speed train to Chandigarh and Kanpur will require more engineering interventions than what was required on the Agra line.
“The Bhopal Shatabdi was already running at a speed of 150 kmph on the Agra route. But the fastest moving trains on the Chandigarh and Kanpur routes run at 110 kmph. So it will require more technical interventions and time to prepare tracks on these two routes for increasing the speed to 160 kmph that has been proposed in the budget,” Divisional Railway Manager (Delhi), Anurag Sachan said.
The Railways are targeting launch of semi-high-speed train between Delhi to Agra by November, but officials refused to give a deadline for launch of similar trains to other destinations.
The officials, however, said starting new trains from stations like New Delhi and Nizamuddin will add pressure to the operation of trains as they already have crossed the saturation limits.
“There is room for new trains to start from Anand Vihar, but New Delhi and Nizamuddin are already running beyond capacity. If required, the proposed trains could be shifted to other stations in future,” said Mr. Sachan.
