Indian Railways is exploring the possibility of increasing the speed of Rajdhani, Shatabdi and Duronto trains to 160-200 km per hour over the next three years, driven by semi high-speed technology.
“We are aiming at increasing the speed of premier trains to up to 160-200 km per hour on Shatabdi routes like Delhi-Bhopal, Delhi-Lucknow and Delhi-Chandigarh on existing tracks,” said Arunendra Kumar, chairman, Railway Board.Currently, the maximum speed of Shatabdi, Rajdhani and Duronto trains is 130-150 km per hour.
The select trains will be run at higher speeds with the existing locomotives, coaches and tracks and only with some minor modification in the system.As per international standards, trains running at 300 km per hour and above are called high-speed trains.
?A high-speed project involves huge expenditure as it requires a dedicated track to run trains at 300 km per hour. But we are going for semi high-speed at the moment with a maximum speed of 200 km per hour,” Kumar said. As far as cost is concerned, he said, “There will be some expenses involved in the project, but they have not been estimated yet. But we are using same loco, same track and same coaches.
