Surat, June 6 (Agency)
Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnav said on Monday that he is confident that the target of running the country’s first bullet train between Surat and Bilimora in Gujarat in 2026 will be achieved as good progress is being made in this direction. Vaishnav was in Surat to take stock of the progress of the government’s ambitious Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project. “We have set a target of running the first bullet train between Surat and Bilimora in 2026,” he told reporters. Good progress is being made in this and we are confident that by then we will complete the work of running the train.
Under this project, bullet trains are to be run at a speed of 320 kilometers per hour in the ‘High Speed Rail’ (HSR) corridor between Ahmedabad and Mumbai. The distance is 508 km and there will be 12 stations between the two destinations. Currently, the journey between the two cities takes six hours but is expected to reduce to three hours after the introduction of the bullet train. The estimated cost of this project is Rs 1.1 lakh crore and 81 percent of the cost will be borne by Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
More than 90 per cent of the total land required for the ambitious Ahmedabad-Mumbai bullet train project, spread across Gujarat, Maharashtra and the Union Territory of Dadra and Nagar Haveli, has been acquired. The project’s implementing agency National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) gave this information on Monday. According to NHSRCL, construction work at all the eight stations for the bullet train project in Gujarat is in various stages.
