The Hindu Business Line : High Speed Rails — Moving passengers fast, and in style

With a growing number of upwardly mobile youth demanding quality services, and low-cost airlines drawing people away from other transport modes, it is time the Railways improved its passenger offering, moving them quickly, free of hassles and in the right ambience. Indeed, the Railways is taking this challenge seriously and is planning high-speed passenger corridors. G. SRINIVASAN on the initiative.

THE RAILWAYS hopes to offer its passengers stress-free journeys and shorter transit times.

The Indian Railways (IR) stands at the crossroads with the economy poised to post high growth in the coming years on the back of robust performances by manufacturing and services segments in recent years. This would definitely offer immense opportunities for the IR if its strategies are in place. With a gargantuan network of 64,465 route kilometres, the IR remains by far the key mode of long-haul bulk freight movement. This is borne out by the incremental freight growth of over 200 million tonnes (mt) logged in the last four years, with the target for the Eleventh Plan at 1100 mt of freight loading in the terminal year compared to 726 million at the end of the Tenth Plan (2006-07). Passenger traffic is likely to reach 8400 million from 6242 million in 2006-07.

With the manufacturing sector growing at a scorching pace and the growing demand from the six major infrastructure industries, the IR has decided to construct Dedicated Freight Corridors in the Western and Eastern sectors. A growing economy deserves an efficient logistics support and what better than the Dedicated Freight Corridors to haul bulk items with speed.

Demanding Population

On the passenger front, engaging the attention of the Railways is the need to provide amenities in the form of good ambience at stations as also big malls and conference halls around them besides moving people through High Speed Rails (HSR). At a time when India is said to be enjoying a demographic dividend with a growing number of upwardly mobile youth that demands quality services, the Railway Minister, in his Budget speech, made a specific reference to the IR's intention to commission a feasibility study for developing high-speed passenger corridors.

And barely two months after this announcement, the Railways' experts are ready to make a formal presentation on the HSR project. Explaining this study to Business Line, the Indian Railways Financial Commissioner, Mr R. Sivadasan, said: "We will be commissioning a thorough pre-feasibility study into ridership and engineering aspects to establish viability of the high-speed corridors selected. Choice of technology options and rolling stocks available from various countries with high speed railways will be made after establishing suitability for India's requirements."

Mr Sujeet Mishra, Deputy Chief Electrical Engineer, Chittarajan Locotomotive Works, said the Railways would adapt the HSR as a fourth dimension to operations besides freight, inter-city non-suburban, and suburban services. The Executive Director, Finance, Ms Anjali Goyal, contends that the network is reaching super saturation and a predominantly low-cost surface carrier must plan ahead for product diversification especially when competition from low-cost airlines is posing a big challenge.

HSR is anchored on three concerns — a dedicated line for passengers, compatibility with extant network and high-frequency operation with short journeys.

Three concerns

The rationale for HSR is that it ensures safe travel, offers world-class comfortable, stress-free journey, has shorter transit time and is punctual. Thus, trains will run at speeds of 250-300 km/hr on dedicated tracks with excellent riding comfort and offer full on-board services — Internet connectivity, mobiles, world-class cuisines to on-board shopping, and conference facilities. The positive benefits of HSR are their energy consumption per km is 3.5 times less than cars, five times lesser than air, 7.7 times lower carbon emissions, 4.5 times lower than even green cars. Studies reveal that 25 per cent of world's carbon-dioxide emissions is from transport, of which 85 per cent is by cars and trucks, only 2 per cent comes from rail; it would be lower still with HSR. HSR requires 70 per cent less land than an expressway; its carrying capacity isd also higher.

With growing affluence raising vehicle ownership and air travel, the projected addition to the middle-class by 2015-2020 in China at 550-600 million and in India at 350-400 million would exacerbate the emission-related problems as the emerging affluent middle-class occupies the highways. The clogging of airports and roads would leave a fairly large carbon footprint, the consequences of which could be dangerous for the climate.

It is in this context that the IR proposes to introduce the carbon-neutral very high-speed rail corridor, which would also offer unmatched superiority in fuel efficiency and emission reduction. HSR consumes 0.933 litre per 100 km compared with 3.267 litre by a hybrid car, and 5.69 litres for average fuel economy cars, or 4.048 litre for best airlines.

One run of HSR with 800 passengers would consume 742 litres per 100 km compared with 6476.4 litres for 100 km by air, 9104 litre per100 km by car and 5227.2-litre per100 km by hybrid car.

In this context, Ms Goyal points out that the HSR system would substantially satisfy some of the 15 measures identified by Robert Socolow and Stephen Pacala in their Wedge Strategy for climate protection which finds a special mention in the Stern Review on climate change that provoked serious discussions all over the world, including India.

A green Mode

The mitigation measures identified in Wedge Strategy include using public transport to reduce distances travelled by cars, and improving energy efficiency by opting for non-coal-based sources of power supply. Ms Goyal suggests the creation of a "Carbon Offset Fund" to penalise high emission modes of transport and reward low carbon belching public transport systems such as HSR.

Mr Sivadasan asserts thus: HSR is faster for movement of 500-700 km, such as Chennai-Bangalore, Coimbatore-Kochi, Mumbai-Ahmedabad or Delhi-Chandigarh-Amritsar. HSR could beat airlines. HSR could match low-cost airlines in terminal management, ticketing and commercials.

The approach to financing construction of the HSR corridor is to be at zero net cost to government, by taking Central and State governments as promoters and by leveraging the parcels of land available land with the Railways and the State governments. He said the HSR does not propose to acquire land for the elevated guide-way.

Undoubtedly, the Railways is determined to take advantage of the strong growth of the economy to offer a new product to move passengers. Going by the enthusiasm of the Railways in mapping out the preliminary work, the days may not be far off when inter-city travel time is dramatically reduced and passengers also get to enjoy world-class ambience and services.