Mysuru-Chennai Bullet Train among 7 finalised routes

• Mysuru-Bengaluru-Chennai 435-km high-speed rail corridor (bullet train) to come up 
• National Highways Authority of India to begin land acquisition; no delay despite COVID

New Delhi: The 435-km high-speed rail (bullet train) corridor between Mysuru-Bengaluru-Chennai will finally be a reality and the route is among the network of high-speed bullet trains on seven new routes. The Indian Railways along with the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) will begin the process of acquiring additional land.

According to reports from New Delhi, the NHAI will soon acquire land to lay tracks for high-speed trains along Greenfield expressways for integrated development of the rail transport network in the country. The decision to acquire additional land was taken during a recent meeting of a Group of Infrastructure Ministers led by Union Minister for Road Transport & Highways Nitin Gadkari.

During the Infra Sector Group meeting, it was decided that the NHAI will take over land acquisition and a four-member committee (task force) was constituted to take this process forward. The task force will work out the modalities for acquiring land and sharing the cost.

As per reports, the Indian Railways plans to run bullet trains on 7 important new routes of the country. The seven high-speed rail corridors are Delhi to Varanasi via Noida, Agra and Lucknow; Varanasi to Howrah via Patna; Delhi to Ahmedabad via Jaipur and Udaipur; Delhi to Amritsar via Chandigarh, Ludhiana and Jalandhar; Mumbai to Nagpur via Nasik; Mumbai to Hyderabad via Pune and Chennai to Mysore via Bengaluru.

The Railway Board has also written to the NHAI and given details of seven high-speed rail corridors for running bullet trains for which the detailed project reports are being prepared. NHAI has been asked to depute a nodal officer for this purpose for better integration of the mammoth planning exercise.

In a related development, Railway Board Chairman V.K. Yadav said that two big-ticket projects — the Dedicated Freight Corridor and the bullet train project — aimed at a modal shift in rail operations in the country, will not be delayed despite the Coronavirus crisis.

His statement comes at a time when most infrastructure projects in the country are facing delays due to the lockdown, coupled with the paucity of labour and the economic slump. 

Once the project is implemented, the bullet train from Mysuru to Chennai via Bengaluru will take just two hours and 25 minutes as against the current seven hours in Shatabdi Express which is the fastest train on this route. 

On a normal train journey, it takes over 10 hours to travel between the two cities. Shatabdi travels at a maximum speed of 110 kms per hour.

The bullet train will run at a maximum speed of 320 kilometres per hour and the actual distance from Mysuru to Chennai is over 485 kilometres while the bullet train corridor will be 435 kilometres. Going by the train speed, it can cover the 145-km distance from Mysuru to Bengaluru in just 45 minutes.