Debate I On Bullet Trains, Let’s Drop Jholawallah Options

Bullet trains will ease long-distance travel and might be accepted the way Delhi Metro has eased into our life.

(As India and Japan embark on an ambitious bullet train project worth Rs 1 lakh crore, The Quint debates whether the initiative would be economically viable. This is the View. You may like to read the Counterview by S Pushpavanam here.)

While inaugurating Bombardier’s metro rail coach factory at Savli in Vadodara in November 2008, Narendra Modi as chief minister of Gujarat took a jibe at the Congress Party. Those who talk of vote bank politics talk of bomb, he said, hinting at the Congress Party’s affinity to a particular community. But for him it was development and Bombardier, a reference to the Canadian manufacturer of trains and airplanes.

Nine years later, the Congress is questioning the prime minister’s decision to invest in a bullet train between Mumbai and Ahmedabad. It faults his priorities and love for giant projects. The investment of over Rs 1 lakh cr could have been better spent in improving the speed and safety of the railway network, its spokespersons say, though they know that the Japanese loan which will finance 85 percent of the project is not replaceable; the money cannot be diverted.

Also Read: 10 Things Modi, Abe Said During Launch of India’s 1st Bullet Train

Critics of Delhi Metro were Silenced

Another set of critics find the interests of the better-off sections privileged against those of the poor. The Delhi metro was also derided as a “suit-boot” piece of showmanship, and the Bus Rapid Transport (BRT or separate bus lanes) was proposed as an alternative that could do as much for less.

Well, Delhi has had to scrap the BRT while the Delhi metro is being patronised by the poor, who love to travel in temperature-regulated comfort, which is quite a change from their usual push-n-shove experience.

Activists like Claude Alvares did their best to stop the Konkan Railway line from Mumbai to Mangaluru on the western coast, saying it will destroy Goa’s wetlands and paddy fields. It has done nothing of the kind. Instead passengers from Mangaluru can now reach Delhi via the eastern coast in 33 hours instead of 56 hours.

Bullet Train is as Revolutionary as Maruti

At the Savli event referred above, Metro Man E Sreedharan told me that India should have invested in high-speed railways (HSRs), instead of dedicated freight corridors, which only shift goods trains to a separate, fast lane. Moving people at speeds of over 300 km per hour requires technology and skills of a different magnitude, in civil engineering, signalling and telecommunications, locomotion and, above all, passenger safety.

The foundation stone laying ceremony for the bullet train on 14 September is a historic development. It is as momentous as India’s first train run in 1853, when three locomotives ─ Sultan, Sindh and Sahib ─ hauled 400 guests in 14 carriages between Bori Bunder in Mumbai and Thane on its outskirts.

The bullet train could do to India’s railways what Maruti has done to its car and auto ancillary industry.

HSRs are no doubt expensive. Many, or perhaps most, are not financially profitable.

But the Mumbai-Ahmedabad line is unlikely to be loss-making. It should be able to draw about 15 million passengers a year, or about 50,000 people on each of 300 working days, willing to pay about Rs 2,500, the same as the air fare, writes Neelkanth Mishra, India Equity Strategist for Credit Suisse, an investment bank.

Also Read: Is India “Running” Slow? Bullet Trains in India vs the World

Economic and Environmental Benefits

New infrastructure creates demand. For instance, I would never travel to Kharibaoli in old Delhi to buy groceries at wholesale prices, but metro connectivity has enabled me to do so.

HSRs should not be evaluated only on profitability. They have wider benefits for the economy. The bullet train might help decongest Mumbai.

People might prefer to stay, say in Surat, which will be an hour away, rather than paying a ransom for a flat in the city. Since HSRs flatter land values in cities where their stations are located, their operators should also get a share of the value they create.

HSRs have environmental benefits as well.

A 2011 European Commission white paper on transport said HSRs are 14 times less car­bon intensive than cars and 15 times less polluting than air planes.

A high-speed train will release 11 grams of carbon dioxide while moving a passenger between Va­lence and Marseille in southeast France, it said, against 151 grams by car and 164 grams by air.

Air Travel vs High-Speed Trains

HSRs can compete with airline over distances of 500 km to 700 km. Unlike airlines, the development of new planned townships between end points is possible because there can be stops, say, every 100 km. The extra cost of carrying an extra passenger on them is also negligible, which is not the case with planes.

In the 2010 budget, the railways had proposed to conduct studies to explore the profitability of the following six routes: (a) Delhi-Chandigarh-Amritsar (450 km); (b) Pune-Mumbai-Ahmedabad (650 km); (c) Hyderbad-Dornakal-Vijayawada-Chennai (664 km) (d) Chennai-Bangalore-Coimbatore-Ernakulam (649 km); (e) Howrah-Haldia (135 km) and (f) Delhi-Agra-Luknow-Varanasi-Patna (991 km).

For the Delhi-Amritsar corridor, Systra of France gave a report in 2015. Pre-feasiblity studies are now being conducted. For the Chennai-Bengaluru-Mysuru stretch the Chinese are conducting feasibility studies. They have also done a planning study for the Delhi-Nagpur part of the Delhi-Chennai corridor.

The Japanese had said that an HSR between Delhi and Mumbai would be very expensive. Their 2012 study had estimated that the cost of converting the existing route to semi-high speed of 200 kmph and travel time of 12 hours to be about $7 billion while a 10-hour line would cost a little over $16 billion. It had recommended a line that could cover the distance in 12 hours.

Under former Railway Minister Suresh Prabhu a plan had been drawn to convert the Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah lines for speeds of 160 kmph to 200 kmph. This would be made possible by the shift in much of the goods traffic to the dedicated freight corridors which are expected to be operational from 2019.

Is High-Speed Travel Cost Effective?

To enable, semi-high speed travel, the railways are proposing to construct stone masonry walls on either side of the track so that there is no trespassing by humans or animals. Crossings will be through underpasses and overbridges but if there are not enough of them, normal life in towns along the route will be disrupted.

In a study done about five years ago, the Ircon International had said that the Delhi-Patna high-speed track via Agra, Lucknow and Varanasi would cost Rs 4.73 lakh crore. It said the service would be profitable even in the worst-case demand scenario.

It expected 15 eight-car trains to carry 57,000 passengers daily at a maximum speed of 300 km an hour when operations commenced in 2020 going up to 44 sixteen-car trains by 2045. The fares would be pretty steep: Rs 7,000 for second class and Rs 9,100 (that is, 30 percent more) for first class. The spot airfare between Delhi and Patna now is about Rs 4,500 but tickets booked a month in advance cost less. Its projections seem to be rich.

China has 20,000 km of HSR lines and plans to add another 10,000 km by 2020. In the early years of this decade, students and migrant workers returning home for the Chinese New Year in January would prefer buses because high-speed train fares were very high. But with incomes rising they have become affordable.

Bullet Trains Might be Accepted One Day

India should go in for a mix of high and semi-high speed trains. Some of the routes may not make money, but there may be economic benefits. Despite higher than anticipated traffic, Delhi’s metro train service does not even cover the cost of operations. The central government is subsidising it; it bears the exchange risk.

The value of yen has risen from 29 paise in 1993-94 to 40 paise in 2002-03. In 2012-13, it touched a high of a little less than 66 paise. The yen is now trading at nearly 58 paise to the rupee. Any appreciation of the yen will raise the cost of loan repayment . But life in Delhi will be impossible without the Delhi Metro.

Without it, the city’s roads would be gridlocked and its air even more un-breathable. Someday even bullet trains might become as basic to life in Indian cities.

Also Read: India-Japan Bullet Trains Initiative Piques China’s Interest

(Vivian Fernandes is the editor at www.smartindianagriculture.in. This is an opinion piece and the views expressed above are the author’s own. The Quint neither endorses nor is responsible for the same.)

(#TalkingStalking: Have you ever been stalked? Share your experience with The Quint and inspire others to shatter the silence surrounding stalking. Send your stories to [e-mail] or WhatsApp @ [phone].)