Riding the bullet train dream, chairman rail board (CRB), Arundendra Kumar, will go to Japan this week in a bid to firm up involvement of Tokyo in the ambitious project. The visit assumes significance in the backdrop of the Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe having shown keen interest in the high speed rail system in India during his New Delhi visit earlier.
Japan has agreed to jointly carry out the survey of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor on which India hopes to run the first bullet train. Mr Kumar, who is known for successfully tying up Public Private Projects (PPP), is hoping to put the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project on the fast track. Even though the successive Union railways ministers, including the incumbent Mallikarjuna Kharge, have shown not much zeal for the bullets trains due to prohibitive cost, the dream project has suddenly propped again in the limelight following support of the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh.
Mr Kumar will be leaving for Tokyo on Wednesday on a three-day trip to Japan. He will also board the bullet train in Tokyo and travel to Osaka to experience the Japanese technology for the high speed rail system. Though China too had shown keen interest to partner India in the high speed rail system, India is quite inclined towards the Japanese technology. Sources said that the Indian railways would in all likelihood be importing the bullet trains from Japan, as the project would require heavy capital investment from Tokyo.
It was during the bilateral summit between Dr Singh and his Japanese counterpart that the two countries formally announced co-finance and joint feasibility study of high speed railway system on the Mumbai-Ahmedabad route. The Mumbai-Ahmedabad rail corridor would be 500 kilometres long at an estimated cost of `60,000 crores and could be extended upto Pune.
The railways had also undertaken a survey of upgrading the speed of passenger trains on the existing Delhi-Mumbai route to 160-200 kmph (semi-high speed railway system) with Japan’s cooperation.
The CRB is also likely to discuss the progress of the Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) with his hosts in Tokyo.