The project implementing agency National High-Speed Rail Corporation (NHSRCL) has been entrusted by the railways to prepare Detailed Project Reports (DPR) for seven new high-speed rail corridors.
The government on Tuesday invited tenders to conduct a survey for a 741 km long high-speed rail corridor from Mumbai to Nagpur for potentially running a Bullet Train on the route. The high speed rail corridor will also pass through Nasik in Maharashtra.
The project implementing agency National High-Speed Rail Corporation (NHSRCL) has been entrusted by the railways to prepare Detailed Project Reports (DPR) for seven new high-speed rail corridors.
The tender reviewed by Hindustan Times has been issued for carrying out ‘survey, identification of overhead, overground, underground utilities and identification of power sourcing options for substations’ along the proposed Mumbai-Nasik-Nagpur High-Speed Rail Corridor.
The national transporter has also begun feasibility studies on seven other potential high-speed corridors to gauge their financial viability and estimated traffic they will attract. The Indian Railways is exploring whether the corridors would be viable to run high-speed Bullet Trains with speeds above 300 kmph.
The seven proposed corridors are Delhi-Varanasi (865 km) Varanasi-Howrah (760 km), Delhi–Ahmedabad, Mumbai–Nagpur (741 km), Mumbai–Hyderabad (711 km), Chennai-Mysore (435 km) and Delhi–Amritsar (459 km).
“The length of the corridors as mentioned is tentative and subject to change as per actual survey,” a NHSRCL spokesperson said.
NHSRCL has also floated tenders related to data collection for the Delhi–Jaipur-Udaipur-Ahmedabad high-speed rail corridor and the Delhi–Lucknow–Varanasi HSR corridor.
The 886 km long Delhi-Ahmedabad high speed rail project will pass through Jaipur and Udaipur in Rajasthan.
This also comes at time when the Centre’s first bullet train project from Ahmedabad to Mumbai is facing delays and may fail to meet its 2023 deadline.
The timeline of the Ahmedabad-Mumbai high-speed rail corridor will need to be reassessed due to Covid 19, but the real timeframe for its completion can be provided only within the next three to six months, railway board chairman and CEO VK Yadav said on Saturday.
Last Friday, Hindustan Times had reported that the work on land acquisition and tendering for the Ahmedabad-Mumbai high-speed rail corridor may face delays due to Covid-19 and the Bullet Train may fail to meet its 2023 deadline.
So far, 63 per cent land has been acquired for the project, according to the railways.
The project has had to contend with issues ranging from protests by landowners to rising costs because of a widening gap between the Indian rupee and the Japanese yen; 80 percent of the Rs 1 trillion needed to fund the project will come from a 20-year Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) loan.
Source: https://www.hindustantimes.com/india-news/govt-invites-bids-for-741-km-long-mumbai-nagpur-high-speed-rail-corridor/story-MIWynnevuVdjFMFyeBdtcJ.html