High-speed electric trains emit between a tenth and a fourth of the CO2 of an aeroplane; a double-track rail line has thrice the passenger-carrying capacity of a six-lane highway.
On a Tokyo-Osaka bullet train in 1970, my son, then six years of age, queried, “When will our Rajdhani run as smooth and fast?” I had an inkling then that Indian Railways (IR) planned to soon have its New Delhi-Howrah and New Delhi-Bombay Central Rajdhanis complete their journey within 12-13 hours. But even this modest goal has eluded IR for 40 years.
Notwithstanding the reiteration of IR’s commitment to high-speed passenger rail corridors by Mamata Banerjee during her Budget speech in February, none of these corridors can materialise even by 2020, for rail journeys, for example, on the 700-km Chennai-Bangalore-Ernakulam or the 683-km Pune-Mumbai-Ahmedabad routes being done in under three hours, or the 539-km Delhi-Chandigarh-Amritsar route in just over two hours, given our penchant for endless arguments and procrastinations.
In close contrast, the 968-km, 350 kmph Wuhan-Guangzhou high-speed passenger train in China has just joined the trailblazing 118 km, 350-kmph Beijing-Tianjin section (on the arterial 1,318 km Beijing-Shanghai corridor) — this has enabled Chinese Railways (CR) to be right at the top of the world’s high-speed train (HST) networks. The frenetic pace of developments in this genre in China outstrips the rest of the world, and will exceed 16,000 route-km by 2020.
At the last count in mid-2009, there were 11 countries operating trains at 250 kmph or higher, eight of them with line speed limits of over 300 kmph. The International Union of Railways (UIC) calculated HST network worldwide to be about 10,700 km by the mid-2009, with some 3,130 km of additional HST lines slated to be ready by the end-2009. With a flurry of activity, Europe is in the throes of a veritable HST revolution.
Although IR became aware of the importance of high-speed rail and made a good, though modest, beginning in the mid-1960s with the Rajdhanis, it has remained frozen in time, initiative and creativity. The fact that the top IR management and leadership have announced, among others, an HST corridor on the 135-km Howrah-Haldia stretch demonstrates their flippancy in conceiving projects — how can any sane person ever justify an HST route for the Howrah-Haldia section?
The then Japanese National Railways triggered a revolution in rail technology development with the introduction of their 515-km Tokaido Shinkansen on the Tokyo-Central-Shin Osaka route in 1964. Japan’s latest state-of-the-art HST version is the Series E5 introduced by East Japan Railway on June 17, 2009, which is designed to reduce noise and smoothen the flow of air over the train while attaining speeds of up to 320 kmph. Following this revolutionary HST story in Japan, the French National Railways (SNCF) operated its first LGV (Ligne a Grande Vitesse) between Paris and Lyon in two stages, opening with a maximum speed of 260 kmph in 1981, moving to 270 kmph in 1983 before launching in 1989 its LGV Atlantique at 300 kmph. SNCF successfully completed trials for operating HST at an incredible 515 kmph in 1990 and 575 kmph on April 3, 2007, thereby showing a huge margin available for safe HST operation.
Spain has gone ahead with developing an impressive HST network after it opened its first AVE (Alta Velocidad Espanola) line in 1992 between Madrid and Seville. Although the Iberian peninsula historically has had its unique 1,668 mm broad gauge rail system, Spain has been building its HST network of 1,435 mm standard gauge as prevalent throughout Europe and the US. With journey time slashed to about 2.5 hours against the old seven hours between Madrid and Barcelona, rail’s share of the air-rail passenger market was up from 12 per cent to 41 per cent during February-August 2008, and airlines’ share down from 88 per cent to 59 per cent. Deutsche Bahn in Germany has moved fast to replace its current IC/EC fleet by state-of-the-art ICx train sets. The UK opened the first part of its high-speed line from the Channel Tunnel to London in 2003. UK’s ambitious High Speed2 (HS2) project envisages 200 m long trains with 550 seats and a design speed of 360 kmph. Italy too will have by 2011 a private sector HST operator, Nuovo Trasporto Viaggiatori (NTV), to launch high-speed Italo services between Rome, Milan and Naples. Swiss Federal Railways (SBB) has established the feasibility of a double-deck tilting EMU at over 250 kmph.
Closer home, Republic of Korea opened its first high-speed line in 2004, whereas, three years later, Taiwan launched a 300 kmph HST between Taipei and Kaohsiung. Turkey joined the HST club in 2008 with a 250 kmph line between Ankara and Istanbul. Saudi Arabia too awarded contracts in February 2009 to build 444-km, 320-kmph Haramain high-speed railway between Mecca and Medina via Jeddah. As the Rio-Sao Paulo-Campinas high-speed line project in Brazil is being actively pursued, Russian Railways (RZD) is due to launch a 250 kmph derivative of Siemens’ Velaro family, the Sapsan, on the 645 km Moscow-St Petersburg route.
HST travel in the US has been limited to a maximum speed of 240 kmph Amtrak’s Acela express on the north-east corridor between Washington DC and Boston. Outlining the biggest investment in infrastructural schemes in the US since President Eisenhower’s inter-state highway project in the 1950s, President Barack Obama committed himself in April 2009 “to build a world-class network of high speed passenger rail corridors”. His January 2010 pronouncement of $8 billion to be released for high-speed and inter-city rail projects is expected to have train speeds on the north-east corridor raised to 355 kmph.
Designed to be faster and safer than a car, cheaper and more convenient than a plane, HST has been a catalyst for economic growth, a stimulus for the development of satellite towns, alleviating migration to congested metropolises. A high-speed electric train emits between a tenth and a quarter of the carbon dioxide of an aeroplane; a double-track rail line has more than thrice the passenger-carrying capacity of a six-lane highway and requires less than half the land. Whether it is the Shinkansen or the TGV/LGV, they have so far operated with an unblemished safety record. Again, the fast expanding HST networks in different parts of the world go to dispel the oft-repeated concern that HST can scarcely be a viable business or that it is essentially elitist. TGV and Shinkansen are hailed as the real low-cost carriers, and profitable too. Between Paris and Southeast France, HST traffic has doubled in the past 10 years and air traffic declined by half.
The cost of building HST lines has indeed been high, depending on the terrain. A route through a densely populated area requiring extensive tunneling may raise the cost compared with a line across flat and vacant countryside. The cost of 300-km LGV Est between the outskirts of Paris and Baudrecourt was around ¤13 million/km. Any HST project would entail an innovative financing mechanism. Several examples exist such as those in Japan, France, China and elsewhere. SNCF borrowed from financial markets and also received an equipment grant equal to 30 per cent of the infrastructure cost for LGV Atlantique from the French government. Within 10 years, positive cash flows from the new services helped repay the capital and interest. For the $995-million Shinkansen project, World Bank loaned an equivalent of $570 million. For the $25 billion Shanghai-Beijing HST corridor, an SPV — the Beijing-Shanghai High Speed Railway Corp — has an equity capital of 50 per cent and raised the other half of capital through bonds and loans.
Evolution takes place in steps, one at a time. Miss one stage and you are up against it to catch up. India need not be in the speed rat-race but, as a rapidly emerging economy with a population of a billion and more, over half of them young and aspiring amidst a revolution of rising expectations, it cannot stay on the back benches either. With the opening of the new world-class airport in Delhi, we have taken an evolutionary step as far as air travel is concerned and have shown that we can do it. Why can’t we do that on the railway front too? We have to make a beginning quickly as the gestation period of such projects is long and we are not exactly famous for our alacrity in such matters. Resources will be found. What is, however, really lacking is the will to do it and to do it now. Otherwise India might be hard put to figure in the top 30 HST countries. The question to be asked is: Why deprive Indians of high-speed rail travel?
