The MoU was signed by Railway Minister C P Joshi and visiting Spain Minister of Public Works and Transport Ana Pastor Julian for technical cooperation in the rail sector.
Spain has a modern railway network linking all major towns and cities.
Under the pact, both the countries are to promote cooperation and information exchange in the areas of high speed railway, upgrading of speed of passenger trains on existing lines, improving safety of train operations, modernising rolling stock, construction and maintenance technologies for track, bridges, tunnels, power supply systems, signaling and telecommunications and other cooperation in railway related technology developments.
Railways is in the process of setting up a high-speed rail authority to run trains at 300 km/hour speed on seven selected routes.
"We have plans to develop high-speed train service in the country and currently we are in the process of carrying out pre-feasibility study on seven identified corridors," the official said.
Spanish consultant Eneco has been hired to carry out studies in the Howrah-Haldia (135 km) route and it has submitted the initial report.
The identified routes for proposed bullet train service are Pune-Mumbai-Ahmedabad (650 km), Delhi-Chandigarh-Amritsar (450km), Delhi-Lucknow-Patna (991 km), Hyderabad-Chennai (644km), Chennai-Bangalore-Thiruvanthapuram (850 km) and Delhi-Jaipur-Jodhpur (591 km).
Railways has roped in French firm Systra for Pune-Mumbai- Ahmedabad (650 km) route while UK-based consultant Mott McDonald has been engaged to conduct the pre-feasibility study of the Delhi-Agra-Lucknow-Varanasi-Patna (991 km) route.
According to an estimate, it will cost about Rs 100 crore to construct one km high-speed corridor. As per the preliminary report, ridership revenues would be able to cover the operating cost of the project.
State governments and financial institutions are expected to be stakeholders of the high-speed rail corridor projects which will be executed in PPP mode.
