The Railways is undertaking measures for improving speed of both passenger and freight trains. Improvement in average speed of trains is a continuous exercise for Railways. Further, the Government in August 2019 has approved two projects for raising of speed to 160 Kmph on existing New Delhi-Mumbai (including Vadodara-Ahmedabad) and New Delhi-Howrah (including Kanpur-Lucknow) routes. In addition, the Railways have sanctioned a large number of capacity enhancement works over various zones which when commissioned, are bound to increase the speed of trains and cut travel time on various routes.

At present, Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail (HSR) corridor is the only HSR Project which is sanctioned and the same is under execution with the technical & financial cooperation from Government of Japan. Further, Ministry of Railways has decided to undertake Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the following six HSR corridors:

(i) Delhi – Noida – Agra – Kanpur – Lucknow- Varanasi (865 kms)

(ii) Delhi – Jaipur – Udaipur – Ahmedabad (886 kms)

(iii) Mumbai – Nasik – Nagpur (753 kms)

(iv) Mumbai – Pune – Hyderabad (711 kms)

(v) Chennai – Bangalore – Mysore (435 kms)

(vi) Delhi – Chandigarh – Ludhiana – Jalandhar – Amritsar (459 kms)

The work of undertaking DPR has been entrusted to National High Speed Rail Corporation Ltd. (NHSRCL).

This press release is based on information given by the Minister of Railways and Commerce & Industry, Shri Piyush Goyal in a written reply to a question in Lok Sabha today.

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RCJ/MKV