Bengaluru-Mangaluru Vande Bharat soon: Union Minister Vaishnaw
BENGALURU: Union Minister for Railways, Information & Broadcasting, and Electronics & Information Technology Ashwini Vaishnaw announced on Saturday that a Vande Bharat train between Mangaluru and Bengaluru will be operational soon.
He also informed that a premium train would soon be operational between Bengaluru and Mumbai, and that the request for the Pune-Bengaluru rail corridor would be considered.
“We were focusing on the electrification of Hassan and Mangaluru, which is now complete. Once a section is electrified, many tests have to be done. Once those tests are done, we move to safety certification. Once that happens, then we will be working on the timetable, and we will be covering the entire coastal part of Karnataka in this service up to Karwar. We will be taking input from the state budget,” the minister told reporters at the BJP office in Bengaluru.
He said 12 pairs of Vande Bharat trains are already operational in Karnataka, and in the future, the entire state will be covered. “This is my promise to you, and as Prime Minister Narendra Modi Ji’s government has always delivered on its promises, this promise will also be delivered,” he said.
“There will be two trains for the coast because it’s a long section—one train from the coast to Bengaluru and the other from Bengaluru to the coast. This is unlike many other services where a single rake covers both directions,” he said.
He said that once the Bengaluru-Chennai High-Speed Corridor is implemented, the travel time between the two cities will be 73 minutes. “Bengaluru and Chennai will, in a sense, become two merged cities.
One can start at any time of the day, finish their business, work, meet their relatives in Chennai, and return to Bengaluru the same day,” he said, adding that similarly, the travel time between Hyderabad and Bengaluru will be two hours, and it will all be part of high-speed diamond corridor of South India.
He claimed that in the first phase, the Mumbai-Ahmedabad project was taken up because it is an extremely complex undertaking. “Designing trains to operate at speeds of 350 kmph involves major challenges, including extreme vibrations, control, and stability. At such high speeds, a partial vacuum is created around the moving train, which requires advanced design features to address aerodynamic and safety concerns.
Through this first project, we have gained a clear understanding of bullet train design. Our engineers, workforce, and industry have moved up the learning curve, acquiring the expertise needed for high-speed rail development. This experience has now enabled us to move into the second phase,” he elaborated.
In the second phase, seven bullet train projects have been approved, and under the Viksit Bharat roadmap, the total length of bullet train corridors is planned to reach 7,000 km. “So far, about 4,000 km has been announced, including the Mumbai-Ahmedabad line,” he said.
‘Bengaluru Suburban Rail Project progressing’
Ashwini Vaishnaw informed that Corridors 2 and 4 of the Bengaluru Suburban Railway project have progressed well, as the state government has appointed a technical person as the Managing Director of the K-RIDE company after repeated requests, especially from Union MoS for Railways
V Somanna.
“The work across all four corridors have picked up pace, and the designs have now been completed, tender documents have been prepared, and the necessary approvals have been obtained for developing a complex suburban system. More than half of the alignment is elevated, requiring careful design, especially as it runs alongside railway lines,” he said, adding that innovations in the bullet train projects are being applied to the construction of the suburban rail system.