India Agrees to $17b Bullet Train Project
David Wagman | September 14, 2017
In 2016, Abe and Modi rode a bullet train together in Japan.
Japanese prime minister Shinzo Abe laid the foundation stone for a bullet-train stretch in India between Ahmedabad in Gujarat and Mumbai in Maharashtra.
The $16.9 billion project will mostly be funded through a 50-year loan from Japan at a 0.1 percent annual interest rate. Once completed in 2022, the line is expected to cut the 500-kilometer trip between the two cities from eight hours to three hours.
The route will have 12 stations and will include a 7 km undersea tunnel. The trains will have a top speed of up to 350 km per hour, more than double that of India’s fastest trains.
The government is reportedly firming plans for a similar project between New Delhi and Amritsar via Chandigarh.
India will be the first country to import the Shinkansen bullet-train technology after Taiwan.
Set up in 1853, the 164-year-old Indian Railways is the world’s fourth-largest railway network and India’s largest employer with 1.4 million people. It operates 19,000 trains—12,000 passenger and 7,000 freight—daily.
The government of Narendra Modi is promising to invest more than $130 billion to modernize the railway infrastructure.
At $36,000,000 per kilometer I sure hope that includes about 500 bullet train engines, passenger cars, and stations!?
Another transport for the wealthy funded by the public?
Westerners
In reply to #1
Hundreds, maybe thousands, of Indians starving to death each day, with not a cent to be spent improving water qualty, sanitation conditions, etc., ???
Where is their logic???
After the system is up and running, I wouldn't be surprised if layoff notices are sent out to 1.3 million of the 1.4 million employees.
Slum Dog Express
Safe Mobility (Surface , air, sea ) is essential to facilitate needful service's & goods to reach needful people at affordable cost on the right time any where on the world.
This starting point should ignite as as good step towards growth (Bullet Train) of connectivity across states , country & world.
Timely completion is crucial. If it runs on pure green power / environmental friendly, it will be one more feather to this project.
It must be on cost sharing basis without subsidisation / Undercharging users.
In reply to #5
" If it runs on Pure Green Power "