KOCHI: Should Kerala go for a third and fourth line along the traditional rail corridor? Not viable, says ‘Metro Man’ E Sreedharan. He termed the two additional lines a multi-decade commitment with SilverLine-scale expenditure to achieve Vande Bharat-level speed improvements. Sreedharan’s comments come at a time when the Railways have launched a feasibility study for the third and fourth lines.
He also stressed that the corridor is constitutionally incapable of the geometric transformation needed for genuine high-speed rail.
“When we already have technology and coaches capable of running at 200 kmph, why invest in tracks limited to 160 kmph?” Sreedharan asked.
The former Delhi Metro Rail Corporation chief pointed out how his revised Kerala High Speed Rail (KHSR) proposal, which now pegs the project cost at `54,000 crore at base, or `56,500 to `60,000 crores at five-year completion cost after inflation, is lower than the SilverLine DPR and substantially more operationally effective than any upgraded version of the traditional corridor. He said the KHSR greenfield approach is the only rational path if Kerala is serious about a travel time paradigm shift.
He said that even after such an expenditure, the maximum operating speed on the traditional corridor would likely remain 130–160 kmph given the inherited curve geometry. “Trains would still take five to six hours between Thiruvananthapuram and Kannur,” he said.
To explain the unviability of the third and fourth lines, he compared the proposal with the recent Cabinet Committee on Economic Affairs (CCEA) approved projects.
“In the case of plain terrain doubling (e.g. Bhagalpur–Dumka, Bihar), the cost comes to around `17–18 crore/km. For moderate terrain doubling (e.g. Ballari–Chikjajur, Karnataka), the cost is approximately around `18–19 crore/km.
For the Kerala-specific doubling benchmark, Indian Railways sanctioned the doubling of the 21.10 km Thuravur-Mararikulam section in Kerala at over `450 crore -- implying over `21 crore per km even for a relatively flat coastal stretch,” Sreedharan said.
He pointed out that the existing Thiruvananthapuram–Shoranur–Tirur–Kannur corridor (~465 km) is among the most geographically constrained rail corridors in India.
Counting out the key cost multipliers that push per-km costs well above the national average, Sreedharan said, “The corridor has approximately 656 curves, many with radii too tight for speeds above 100 kmph. The third and fourth lines in this alignment inherit every curve unless costly realignment is done simultaneously.”