Railways to spend over Rs 6,800 crore to cut Delhi-Mumbai travel time from 15 to 10 hours

To reduce the travel time on the crucial Delhi-Mumbai route, Indian Railways is set to spend over Rs 6,800 crore in the next four years on increasing the speeds of trains plying on the route.

“In a proposal approved by Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, the Railways plans to increase the train speed to 160 kmph on the busy routes of Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah in the next four years,” a railway official was quoted as saying.

By increasing the speeds on these busiest rail routes, the travel time between Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai will be reduced to 12 hours and 10 hours, respectively, as compared to the current 17 hours and 15.5 hours.

Currently, the maximum speed on these routes, which account for 30 percent of passenger and 20 percent of freight traffic, is 130 kmph.

The official said the proposal envisages that in the next 100 days, approval should be obtained for this project and the proposal is being sent to the Cabinet Committee for Economic Affairs (CCEA).

The cost of upgrading the speed on the 1,483-km New Delhi-Mumbai route is estimated around Rs 6,806 crore and that of the 1,525-km New Delhi-Howrah route is pegged at roughly Rs 6,684 crore.

The entire project is proposed to be implemented within four years from the date of approval.

The speed upgrade on key routes is one of 11 proposals that the railways plans to initiate within the next 100 days.

Another major proposal includes the handing over of certain routes to private players, under which they will have to manage everything from ticket bookings, checking, operations, catering services and more.

Starting work on the pilot project for the implementation of the advanced signalling system, aimed at increasing safety and getting higher throughput, is also one of the proposals.