UNABLE to agree a price with Japanese suppliers for 10-car Shinkansen trains to operate on India’s first high-speed line running from Mumbai to Ahmedabad, Indian Railways (IR) last month placed an order with the state-owned Integral Coach Factory (ICF) in Chennai to build two 1435mm-gauge trains with a maximum speed of 250km/h during the 2024-25 financial year.

These steel-bodied trains developed from the 160km/h Vande Bharat platform are expected to achieve two objectives. As well as reducing the need to import rolling stock from Japan, they are expected to enable India to emerge as a rolling stock export hub by transitioning from the manufacture of 1676mm-gauge rolling stock for domestic use to producing 1435mm-gauge designs for possible export to countries including the Philippines, Tanzania, Taiwan and Vietnam.

The plan sounds ambitious, as IR has no experience of building 1435mm-gauge rolling stock. Over the past few years it has been struggling to produce the sleeper version of the Vande Bharat. With a maximum speed of 250km/h, the new trains will only be able to run outside peak hours on the Mumbai - Ahmedabad high-speed line when that is completed. The IR order will therefore not remove the need to import Shinkansen high-speed trains from Japan.

At the same time, expectations are high that IR’s infrastructure upgrade programme will accelerate following the re-election of prime minister, Mr Narendra Modi, albeit at the head of the National Democratic Alliance (NDA) coalition government. In May Modi announced plans to conduct feasibility studies for three more high-speed lines: Thiruvananthapuram - Chennai in southern India, Kolkata - Varanasi in the east, and Amritsar - New Delhi in the north.

Projects fast-tracked

In line with the goals of the National Rail Plan 2030, IR has fast-tracked several projects such as achieving 100% electrification of its network, decongesting the High-Density Routes and operating trains at up to 160km/h on the Delhi - Howrah and Delhi - Mumbai lines. As Modi’s pet project, the 508km Mumbai - Ahmedabad high-speed line is naturally expected to get a boost.

The original commissioning date for Mumbai - Ahmedabad was 2022, but the project has been delayed by approximately six years and there have been major concerns over its rising cost. However, the silver lining is that rapid progress has been made in recent months. All civil contracts have been awarded and 100% of the land required for the project has been acquired. Approximately 180km of viaduct and 311km of viaduct piers have been completed, as well as two steel bridges spanning 70m and 100m respectively at Surat and Anand in Gujarat state. Seven of the 24 river bridges on the new line have been completed. Foundations have been completed at eight stations and excavation work is underway to build the station in Mumbai. Other major civil engineering tasks now in progress include boring India’s first undersea rail tunnel, a 7km section of the 21km running underground between Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) in Mumbai and Shilphata.

Minister of Railways, Mr Ashwani Vaishnaw, has recently announced that the first trial run over the 50km between Surat and Bilimoria will take place in 2026. IR officials indicate the likely commissioning date for the complete new line would be between 2028 and 2030. “The civil works are progressing rapidly,” says Mr Achal Khare, a former managing director of the National High-Speed Rail Corporation (NHSRCL) which is delivering the Mumbai - Ahmedabad project. “The project can be expected to be completed soon.”

The first trial run over the 50km between Surat and Bilimoria will take place in 2026.

Khare also notes the many innovations developed in-house. As part of the government’s Make in India programme, NHSRCL has been increasingly deploying domestically-developed technology. This includes inclinometers, ground settlement markers and tilt meters to monitor construction sites and ensure that tunnelling and excavation work does not cause neighbouring buildings to subside. For the first time, Indian contractors have been engaged in tracklaying work, in order to avoid the long delays experienced when importing technology and materials from Japan in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The price of materials and rolling stock has been rising since the pandemic, adding to the government’s woes in trying to contain project costs which have been increasing rapidly across the board. In 2018 the cost of a 10-car Shinkansen train was estimated at Rs 3.9bn ($US 47m), but by December 2023 this had risen to Rs 4.6bn.

The total cost of the Mumbai - Ahmedabad project was estimated at Rs 110bn in 2014, a figure later revised upwards to Rs 1.65 trillion. Current estimates suggest that this figure will reach Rs 2.2 trillion by the time the new line enters service in 2028-30. The project is being funded with a 50-year loan from the Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica), which bears an annual interest rate of 0.1%. As the loan is meeting 80% of project cost, it can be assumed that Jica will provide Rs 1.65 trillion. Critics of the high-speed project say that the interest component alone of the Jica loan works out at Rs 40bn a year over 50 years. IR may also need to borrow to meet its commitment to provide 20% of project funding.

After factoring in currency conversion rates, as the Jica loan must be paid back in Yen, the total annual interest on loans could well be in the region of Rs 60bn, according to the leaders of the opposition Indian National Congress Party. They calculate that given a daily ridership of 35,800 in 2030, the Mumbai - Ahmedabad high-speed line would generate annual revenue of between
Rs 25bn and Rs 39bn at a conservative estimate. This implies that the revenue shortfall in the first year of operations would be Rs 50bn, they say.

The Mumbai - Ahmedabad corridor has a fully-developed highway network and is well served by domestic flights, and both of these modes are also likely to be more affordable when compared with the cost of travelling by high-speed rail. “But this factor is unlikely to hurt ridership,” an NHSRCL official says.

“Experience across the world shows that high-speed rail is the preferred mode of travel for short distances of between 500km and 800km.” Other officials, however, concede that it will take a few years to build up ridership on India’s first high-speed line.