Railways identifies six routes for high-speed, semi high-speed corridors

The Railways has identified six sections for high speed and semi-high speed corridors, Railway Board Chairman VK Yadav said on Wednesday, adding a detailed project report on these sections will be ready within a year.

The new corridors will join the under-construction Mumbai-Ahmedabad high-speed route.

Trains can run at a maximum speed of over 300 km/hr on a high-speed corridor, while on a semi-high speed corridor, the maximum speed can go beyond 160km/hr.

In a briefing ahead of the Union Budget, Yadav said the six corridors include the Delhi-Noida-Agra-Lucknow-Varanasi (865 km)and the Delhi-Jaipur-Udaipur-Ahmedabad (886km) sections.

Other corridors are: Mumbai-Nashik-Nagpur (753 km), Mumbai-Pune-Hyderabad (711 km), Chennai-Bangalore-Mysore (435 km) and the Delhi-Chandigarh-Ludhiana-Jalandhar-Amritsar (459 km) sections.

"We have identified these six corridors and their detailed project reports (DPR) will be prepared within the year. The DPR will study the feasibility of these routes which includes land availability, alignment and a study of the traffic potential there. After these things are studied, we will decide if they will be high-speed or semi-high speed corridors," said Yadav.

India's bullet train project between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, the country's first high-speed corridor, will be completed by December 2023, he said.

Yadav also said that 90 per cent land acquisition work for the bullet train project will be completed in the next six months.

"We need 1,380 hectare of land for the project. 1,005 hectare was private land of which we have acquired 471 hectares. 149 hectare was state government land of which we have got 119 hectare. The remaining is 128 hectare which is railway land which has been given to the high-speed corporation," he said.

Yadav also said that five bids for civil engineering work which includes track work and tunnels will be opened in March and finalised within six to eight months thence.