Diamond Quadrilateral

Diamond Quadrilateral
Overview
Type High-speed rail
Status Under planning, segments approved
Locale

(bold indicates states containing major termini)

Operation
Owner Indian Railways
Technical
Track gauge Standard gauge
Electrification 25kV AC overhead lines
Operating speed 320 km/h

The Diamond Quadrilateral is a project of the Indian railways to establish a high speed rail network in India. The Diamond Quadrilateral will connect the four mega cities in India, Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai, similar to the Golden Quadrilateral expressway system.

High-speed train on Mumbai-Ahmedabad section will be the first high-speed train corridor to be implemented in the country. On 9 June 2014, the President of India Pranab Mukherjee, officially mentioned that the Government led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi will launch a Diamond Quadrilateral project of high speed trains.[1]

History

Prior to the 2014 general election, the two major national parties (Bharatiya Janata Party and Indian National Congress(INC)) pledged to introduce high-speed rail. The INC pledged to connect all of India's million-plus cities by high-speed rail,[2] whereas BJP, which won the election, promised to build the "Diamond Quadrilateral" project, which would connect the cities of Chennai, Delhi, Kolkata, and Mumbai via high-speed rail.[3] This project was approved as a priority for the new government in the incoming president's speech.[4] Construction of one kilometer of high speed railway track will cost ₹100 crore (US$14 million) - ₹140 crore (US$19 million) which is 10-14 times higher than the cost of construction of standard railway.[5]

India's Union Council of Ministers approved the proposal of Japan to build India's first high-speed railway on 10 December 2015.[6] The planned rail will run approximately 500 km (310 mi) between Mumbai and the western city of Ahmedabad at a top speed of 320 km/h (200 mph).[7][8] Under this proposal, the construction began in 2017 and is expected to be completed in the year 2022.[9] The estimated cost of this project is ₹980 billion (US$14 billion) and is financed by a low-interest loan from Japan.[10] Operation is officially targeted to begin in 2023, but India has announced intentions to attempt to bring the line into operation one year earlier.[11] It will transport the passengers from Ahmedabad to Mumbai in just 3 hours and its ticket fare will be cheaper than air planes i.e. ₹2500-₹3000.

Route

This corridor will be operated on standard gauge. The major terminals will be at Delhi, Mumbai, Visakhapatnam, Thiruvananthapuram, Bangalore, Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata. The corridor will pass through 14 states and territories in India. These states are Gujarat, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Haryana, Jharkhand, Maharashtra, Karnataka, Kerala, Odisha, Rajasthan, Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Uttar Pradesh and West Bengal. Trains will operate at top speed of 320 kmph.

The corridors will have following stations:

Delhi - Mumbai corridor : New Delhi - Dwarka - Gurugram - Rewari - Jaipur - Kishangarh - Ajmer - Bhilwara - Nathdwara - Udaipur - Himmatnagar - Sabarmati - Ahmedabad - Anand - Vadodra - Surat - Vapi - Boisar - Virar - Thane - Mumbai

Delhi - Kolkata corridor : New Delhi - Aligarh - Agra - Kanpur - Lucknow - Sultanpur - Varanasi - Buxar - Gaya - Patna - Dhanbad - Asansol - Bardwan - Howrah

Mumbai - Chennai corridor : Thane - Navi Mumbai - Lonavala - Pune - Solapur - Gulbarga - Raichur - Guntakal- Kadapa - Tirupati - Chennai

Kolkata - Chennai corridor : Howrah - Haldia - Cutttack - Bhubaneshwar - Vijayanagram - Vishakapatnam - Rajahmundry - Eluru - Nellore - Chennai

Delhi - Chennai corridor : New Delhi - Agra - Gwalior - Guna - Bhopal - Itarsi - Betul - Nagpur - Nizamabad - Hyderabad - Vijaywada - Ongole - Chennai

Mumbai - Kolkata corridor : Thane - Nashik - Aurangabad - Akola - Nagpur - Durg - Raipur - Bilaspur - Rourkela - Kharagpur - Howrah

Current status

Contracts have been awarded to carry out the feasibility study of high speed rail corridors. The corridors being considered for feasibility study are as follows,

  1. Package 1: Delhi Mumbai - Feasibility Study Contract awarded to a Consortium of M/s The Third Railway Survey and Design Institute Group Corporation (CHINA) and Lahmeyer International (India) Pvt. Ltd, India
  2. Package 2: Mumbai Chennai - Feasibility Study Contract awarded to a Consortium of M/s SYSTRA (FRANCE) - RITES- Ernest &Young LLP
  3. Package 3: Delhi Kolkata - Feasibility Study Contract awarded to a Consortium of M/s INECO (SPAIN) - M/s TYPSA- M/s Intercontinental Consultants and Technocrats Private Limited. Expected cost of 1583 km Delhi - Kolkata corridor is around ₨ 84000 crores and is capable of reducing the travel time to just over 5 hrs from existing 17 hrs taken by Rajdhani.[12]

The Ministry of Railways stated that the final feasibility reports for three high speed rail lines — from Mumbai to Chennai, Delhi and Nagpur - would be completed by January 2017. Preliminary geo-technical studies, and other related studies, are expected to begin by 2018.[13]

See also

References

  1. ↑ Address by The President of India to the Joint sitting of Parliament 2014 (PDF), archived from the original (PDF) on 14 July 2014
  2. ↑ INC Manifesto - infrastructure Archived 2014-04-02 at the Wayback Machine.
  3. ↑ BJP Manifesto 2014
  4. ↑ Diamond quadrilateral of high-speed trains - A Dastidar, Indian Express, 10 June 2014
  5. ↑ Lok Sabha 16 March 2015
  6. ↑ "Indian government 'clears Japan rail plan'". BBC.com. 10 Dec 2015. Retrieved 26 May 2018.
  7. ↑ India to sign deal with Japan to get first bullet train - The Hindu
  8. ↑ Japan's High-Speed Rail Breakthrough | The Diplomat
  9. ↑ Safi, Michael (2017-09-14). "India starts work on bullet train line with £12bn loan from Japan". The Guardian. ISSN 0261-3077. Retrieved 2017-09-18.
  10. ↑ India Said to Pick Japan for High-Speed Rail Project - WSJ
  11. ↑ "Japan Is Selling Bullet Trains to India". Bloomberg.com. 2017-09-13. Retrieved 2017-12-15.
  12. ↑ Bullet Train May Reduce Delhi-Kolkata Travel Time To 5 Hours
  13. ↑ "On track: Final reports on city bullet trains set for January". dna. 25 November 2016. Retrieved 26 November 2016.
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