Editor,
Seven more bullet trains are on the cards as the government approves routes for them even before the highly-anticipated maiden Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train starts functioning with the tentative date of late 2028 or early 2029.
These seven new routes will reduce travel times by a huge margin – 48 minutes between Mumbai and Pune, 73 minutes between Bengaluru and Chennai, 2 hours and 10 minutes between Bengaluru and Hyderabad, 2 hours 8 minutes between Pune and Hyderabad, 2 hours between Delhi and Lucknow, 3 hours 15 minutes between Delhi and Varanasi and, the longest, 6 hours between Delhi and Siliguri.
Once up and running such projects will be testament to India’s economy growing by leaps and bounds. I am elated for such developments in our country, however I am wary of the fact that will such ambitious rich infrastructure be able to find adequate passengers to recover the cost since it is a well known fact that apart from Delhi metro, all others metros are gimmicks from politicians as none of them are profitable.
We must think through the economic viability of these projects before implementing them.
Yashaswi Bairagi
Ujjain
