India and Japan this week signed a deal to build a high-speed train connection between Mumbai and Ahmedabad implementing Shinkansen technology for the first time. Construction of the high-speed network between two of India’s most commercial hubs is slated to begin in 2017 at a cost of £9.6bn and could be completed as early as 2023 reducing the journey time to two hours. Currently the fastest train connecting Mumbai Central station and Ahmedabad Junction is the Shatabdi Express, which covers 493km in six hours and twenty minutes.
Support for the project has been mixed, with critics protesting against the exorbitant sum of money being spent on a single route when the other 65,000km of India’s existing railway network has fallen into disrepair, with a less than exemplary safety record.
However, in a written statement to parliament, Manoj Sinha, the minister of state for railways, explained that Japan has offered India an assistance package proposal to fund 81 per cent of the cost with a 0.1 per cent interest rate. This loan is intended exclusively for India to purchase Japan’s rail technology and cannot be used to upgrade existing infrastructure, rendering the criticism redundant.
Incorporating Shinkansen technology into India’s railway network is a positive step towards decreasing accidents and derailments as the Japanese technology is renowned for its emphasis on safety. In more than fifty years Japan has seen only two derailments – one during a blizzard and one during an earthquake – and no fatalities owing to derailments or collisions.
Continuous upgrades to the technology have ensured that the average delay is 36 seconds and a series of earthquake countermeasures triggers automatic braking that can stop a train travelling at 187mph within 300m.
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Prime Minister Narendra Modi and the railways minister, Suresh Prabhu, have been accused of feathering their own nests by bringing the bullet train to their respective states of Gujarat and Maharashtra, however incorporating bullet trains into the Indian railway network was a part of Modi’s prime ministerial campaign and the route covers a number of key cities including Surat, the home of India’s diamond cutters, which would boost trade.
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Japan has also indicated that India can use an Indian company as its prime contractors which will boost employment, in addition to the general employment that will be generated from hiring station staff and railway attendants.
The route also runs along flat, sea-level terrain rather than some of the mountainous and more treacherous areas in the south and north of India which have presented difficulties to engineers in the past, making it a safe region within which to trial the technology.
However the benefit of the route is likely to extend only to business travellers and the very wealthy as a one-way ticket is estimated to cost Rs.2,800 (£28). A one-way ticket on the Shatabdi currently costs Rs. 1,000 (£10), twenty times the price of a ticket in general class on a passenger train, which takes sixteen hours at a cost of Rs.50 (50pence).
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