A. Harikumar
India’s National Rail Plan (NRP), for creating a future ready railway network by 2030 includes high speed railway corridors criss-crossing the country through different states connecting major Indian cities; however, Kerala doesn’t find a place in it.. The initial plan announced by the then railway minister Piyush Goyal in March, 2021, which planned to build eight high seed corridors has been upgraded to 12 recently according to media reports, but Kerala doesn’t feature in the new list also.
Ironically, when the whole country is gearing up for bullet trains which runs through, high speed rail corridors, Kerala, where trains trundle at around 50 kmph on an average, is planning a semi high speed rail corridor. Kerala government’s dream project SilverLine will thus result in the state continuing to be a laggard in the Indian railway network. The takeaway is SilverLine will ensure that speed and technology-wise Kerala railway network continues to be on the outliers.
The high speed rail networks proposed initially were: 1- Mumbai-Ahmedabad (country’s 1st under construction), Delhi-Varanasi 3- Nagpur-Mumbai, 4- Delhi-Ahmedabad, 5- Delhi-Amritsar, 6- Mumbai-Hyderabad, 7- Varanasi-Howrah, and 8- Chennai-Mysore. The newly proposed ones are 1- 618km-long Hyderabad – Bangalore, 2- 855 km -long Nagpur – Varanasi, 3- 850km long Patna-Guwahati and 4- 190 km long Amritsar-Pathankot- Jammu. Kerala’s neighbouring states, Tamil Nadu, Karntaka, Andhra Pradesh and Telengana feature in the network.
Meanwhile, a recent press release of Indian Railways pointed out that many of the trains of the railways have achieved maximum speed of 130 kmph on stretches. Trains like Vande Bharat Express and Gathima express have Delhi-Bhopal Satabdhi Express have maximum speed of more than 130 km. The Vande Bharat express has an average speed of 130 kmph.
Moreover the NRP envisions upgradation of speed of existing services to 160 kmph on Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai routes and upgradation of speed to 130kmph on all other Golden Quadrilateral-Golden Diagonal (GQ/GD) routes
The increased speed of existing services will make the proposed SilverLine, which is expected to run at an average speed of 200 kmph look unattractive for passengers against the backdrop of high fares.
