Railways to raise speed of trains on 2 routes

New Delhi Dec 27 (IANS) The government on Wednesday said the Indian Railways plans to develop two speed raising projects of 3 000 km on Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah routes at an estimated cost of Rs 18 000 crore. The proposed speed under these projects will be 200 kmph.

Minister of State for Railways Rajen Gohain in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha said: "Two speed raising projects have been included in Pink Book 2017-18. The projects cover Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah routes."

He said the 1 483 km New Delhi-Mumbai (via Vadodara-Ahmedabad) route has an estimated cost of Rs 11 189 crore and passes through seven States -- Maharashtra Gujarat Madhya Pradesh Rajasthan Haryana Uttar Pradesh and Delhi.

"The 1 525 km New Delhi-Howrah route (including Kanpur-Lucknow) has an estimated cost of Rs 6 974 crore and passes through five States -- Delhi Uttar Pradesh Bihar Jharkhand and West Bengal " Gohain said.

The Minister also said that the principal routes of the Railways on the Golden Quadrilateral along with diagonals (Delhi-Mumbai Delhi-Howrah Howrah-Chennai Chennai-Mumbai Delhi-Chennai and Howrah-Mumbai) carry about 58 per cent of freight traffic and 52 per cent of coaching traffic with a share of approximately 15 per cent of the network which is about 9 100 km.

Gohain also said that the total average speed up to October 2017 of all goods trains is 23.1 kmph and passenger trains is 44.4 kmph in the country.

--IANS
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