Constructing 15 kilometres bullet train track every month: Ashwini Vaishnaw

India is standardising its bullet train for all future projects and now developing 15 kilometres (kms) high speed track every month, Union Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said Tuesday.

“The pace of work has now increased due to our own engineering and adoption of best technologies,” he told journalists at sidelines of a press briefing after the union cabinet, adding comparable high speed tracks in the world were built at a paltry 0.5 kms per month.

“We now have a knowledge base of making a 120 feet bridge in 16 hours,” the minister said, noting the inauguration of India’s first bullet train project will take place in August next year and construction had started on August 11, 2021.


Vaishnaw said India is standardising bullet train components for future projects to support local manufacturing of key equipment.

An initial 97-km stretch of the high speed corridor between Surat and Vapi in Gujarat is expected to start operations next year. This launch is part of a phased opening for the 508-km Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor which is designed for 320 km/h operating speeds.

The Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project started in 2016 but has been delayed largely due to land acquisition issues in Maharashtra. This led to costs rising to nearly Rs 1.98 lakh crore, almost doubling from Rs 1.08 lakh crore originally estimated.

“Two and a half years were wasted because of Uddhav Thackeray’s (then Chief Minister) reluctance and land acquisition issues in Maharashtra,” Vaishnaw said, stating the centre is taking a careful approach to future corridors which will significantly reduce travel time between major cities.

“We set up to the world’s largest geo technical laboratory in Gujarat to assess soil samples for the bullet train project,” the minister added.

The government announced plans to develop seven new bullet train corridors in budget 2026-27. The proposed corridors are Mumbai-Pune, Pune-Hyderabad, Hyderabad-Bengaluru, Hyderabad-Chennai, Chennai-Bengaluru, Delhi-Varanasi and Varanasi-Siliguri. The Railway Board estimates these seven high-speed networks span nearly 4,000 kilometres and are expected to attract investments of about Rs 16 lakh crore.