Why India should think of High Speed Rail Network

Text: Raghu Dayal A recent McKinsey report suggests that by 2025, India will be the world’s fifth largest economy after the United States, Japan, China and the UK. By then, the number of households earning Rs 200,000 to Rs 1 million a year will have risen to 583 million from the current 50 million, thus stimulating consumer economy and changes in lifestyle.  Indian Railways needs to look ahead, plan for a new future High Speed Rail (HSR) revolution symbolising technological and organisational redesign of a mature mobility mix. HSR clearly has the potential to unlock an immense hidden value.  Worldwide concerns over depleting fossil fuel reserves, climate change, overcrowded airports, delayed flights and congested roads have conspired with the HSR technology alternative: a full high speed electric train emits between a tenth and a quarter of the carbon dioxide of an aeroplane.  HSR entails much less land usage than motorways: a double track rail line has more than thrice the passenger carrying capacity of a six-lane highway while requiring less than half the land.  Designed to be faster than a car, cheaper and more convenient than a plane, HSR has been a catalyst for economic growth, a stimulus for the development of satellite towns, alleviating migration to metropolises.  For distances of 500-700 km, airlines cannot match HSR; below 200 km, road transport has an edge; beyond 1,000 km, air option may be better. Read about this topic to below Recent railway budgets had assured the nation that feasibility studies would be initiated regarding the induction of high speed trains along  World's top High Speed Rail Networks Why India should think of High Speed Rail Network All about Rajdhani and Shatabdi selected 300-350 km/h passenger corridors. The new railway minister, however, has not included even a reference to the high speed rail (HSR) project in the rail budget. The fact is, projects as important as this need to command continuity and commitment, given its cost-intensive and time-demanding nature.  Forty years ago, Howrah-New Delhi Rajdhani Express signified IR’s tryst with the high speed era, five years after Japan ushered in the revolution of high speed rail (HSR) in 1964, on the purpose-built 550 km Tokyo-Osaka route. Time on IR has run still, but world witnesses an HSR flurry. Japan’s Shinkansen was followed by French TGV (Train à Grand Vitesse) in 1981, Germany’s Inter-City Express in 1991 and Spain’s AVE (Automotice a Grande Vitesse) in 1992, among others.  Today, India has 19 pairs of Rajdhanis and 14 pairs of Shatabdis. While the Shatabdi on the 200 km New Delhi-Agra route is cleared for a maximum speed of 150 km/h, the upper limit of Rajdhanis and Shatabdis has remained limited to 130 km/h. The fastest among them, the New Delhi-Mumbai Rajdhani, covers 1,388 km in 16 h 35 min, averaging about 84 km/h.  Worldwide concerns over depleting fossil fuel reserves, climate change, overcrowded airports, delayed flights and congested roads have conspired with the HSR technology alternative: a full high speed electric train emits between a tenth and a quarter of the carbon dioxide of an aeroplane. HSR entails much less land usage than motorways: a double track rail line has more than thrice the passenger carrying capacity of a six-lane highway while requiring less than half the land. Designed to be faster than a car, cheaper and more convenient than a plane, HSR has been a catalyst for economic growth, a stimulus for the development of satellite towns, alleviating migration to metropolises. For distances of 500-700 km, airlines cannot match HSR; below 200 km, road transport has an edge; beyond 1,000 km, air option may be better.  Rajdhanis and Shatabdis initially reckoned by sceptics and cynics as elitist and unviable are in no way pro-rich, nor unremunerative. For TGV in France, a general query was: why do we need a train for the rich? Today, TGV is hailed as the real “low cost” carrier and profitable too. The first Paris-Lyon line, opened in 1981, delivers a return of 15% and the Paris-Atlantic seaboard route, opened in 1990, 12%. Some 800 TGV services operating daily in France carried over 200 million passengers and earned a profit of e 685 million in 2006. Income from the Shinkansen in 2005 totalled US $19.2 billion, 47% of JNR group’s rail business income. A really important plus is HSR’s unblemished safety record: Shinkansen has had no fatality; so also the TGV sans any accident in 25 years and more of its operation.  With a colossal level of investment, estimated at e150 billion in the next 15 years, Europe is in the grip of a veritable HSR revolution. In July 2007, HSRs in France, Germany, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland and the Netherlands joined with existing international services such as the cross-channel Eurostar and the Paris-Brussels Thalys to form Railteam, a new marketing alliance. With about 1,300 km of high speed lines and the third generation ICEs now topping 360 km/h, German Railways are now in the vanguard of Europe’s rail revolution.  France’s HSR network has been spinning a web from Paris to the corners of the French hexagon since the mid-1970s. Between Paris and South-east  World's top High Speed Rail Networks Why India should think of High Speed Rail Network All about Rajdhani and Shatabdi France, HSR traffic doubled in the past 10 years and air traffic declined by half. SNCF is experimenting with coupling two sets to form a 20-vehicle Super Duplex TGV set, with more than 1,000 seats. A double-decker TGV makes two round trips daily between Paris and the south or west of France, carrying some 1,000 passengers on each leg. No country is building HSRs faster than Spain ever since it launched in 1992 the 471-km high speed Madrid-Seville corridor, adopting standard gauge instead of its normal broad gauge.  Outside Europe, South Korea launched in April 2004 the 412-km Seoul-Pusan high speed corridor, using TGV technology. Taiwan celebrated on 24 October 2007 the completion of the 339-km Taipei-Kaohsiung HSR, a US $16 billion BOT project. Resolutely poised in the queue are several others including Turkey, Hungary, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Morocco, Russia. Most important of all, China is pressing ahead with 11 HSR lines, aggregating 7,000 route km by 2010, to be expanded to 16,000 km by 2020. The US too is now gearing up to high speed rail travel. America’s first and only HSR service — Acela Express — tilts into curves, reaching a top speed of 240 km/h. Sixtyfour corridors have been identified for high speed services to operate at 176 km/h (with diesel traction).  Of course, HSR is an expensive proposition, calling for an innovative financing mechanism. SNCF borrowed on the domestic and foreign financial markets. It received an equipment grant equal to 30% of the infrastructure cost for TGV Atlantique from the French government. Within 10 years, positive cash flows from the new services helped repay the capital and interest on the debt. For the US $995 million Shinkansen project (in 2007 $ value), World Bank extended a $80 million aid in 1961 (equal to $570 million in 2007). For the US $25-billion Beijing-Shanghai HSR corridor, an SPV — the Beijing-Shanghai High Speed Railway Corp — will have an equity capital of 50%. The SPV will raise the other half of capital in commercial debt through bonds and loans.  A recent McKinsey report suggests that by 2025, India will be the world’s fifth largest economy after the United States, Japan, China and the UK. By then, the number of households earning Rs 200,000 to Rs 1 million a year will have risen to 583 million from the current 50 million, thus stimulating consumer economy and changes in lifestyle. IR need to look ahead, plan for a new future HSR revolution symbolising technological and organisational redesign of a mature mobility mix. HSR clearly has the potential to unlock an immense hidden value.