Mumbai: A portion of the bullet train route, from Surat to Thane, is set to be operational by 2028, with the entire corridor from BKC to Ahmedabad to be ready by 2029, said railway minister Ashwini Vaishnav on Saturday.
Vaishnav, visiting Ghansoli to oversee the tunnel construction, said that the bullet train will be a “transport for the middle class” and while the fares are yet to be determined, he assured that they would “be reasonable”. He added that while the Mumbai-Ahmedabad is a nine hour journey as per google maps, the bullet train will be able to cover the distance in around two hours seven minutes.
The railway minister said, “The timetable of these high speed trains will be designed in a way that people can board a train every 10 minutes. Initially, the trains will depart every 30 minutes. There will be no need for (advanced) ticket reservations for travel between Mumbai and Ahmedabad, and passengers can arrive at the station and board the trains,” added Vaishnaw.
While the ticket system is yet to be formulated, the minister hinted that passengers could directly come to the station and buy their tickets as is the case for local trains.
According to Vaishnav, the project had been delayed for 2.5 years during the Uddhav Thackeray government, but he said by 2027 the stretch between Bilimora and Surat will be complete, and the rest by 2029. He said that three more high-speed routes were in the pipeline in the north, east, and south of India, and added that a Japanese delegation was satisfied with the ongoing work.
Replying to Hindustan Times at Ghansoli, the minister said the E10 series of Shinkansen high-speed trains which can run at speeds up to 350kmph will ferry passengers along the 508km long Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor. He clarified that Vande Bharat trains would not run on the bullet train routes.
The railway minister’s remarks came following his visit to Ghansoli where the final stretch of a 4.9km tunnel was dug up using the New Austrian Tunnel Method (NATM) which uses the natural strength of surrounding rocks to stabilise the tunnel. In the next steps of the tunnel’s construction, a tunnel boring machine will dig up the remaining 15.5km of the 21km route from BKC to Shilphata. The underground route contains a 7km undersea stretch where it passes below the Thane Creek.
On September 23, the first tunnel boring machines will arrive from China at the Jawaharlal Nehru Port Authority (JNPA). The vessel, Chipol Xiongan which left the Nansa port on September 7 is carrying 18 packages and two containers weighing 934 metric tonnes.
As per a railway official, “Custom clearance at JNPA and transportation to the (digging) site will take around 10 days.” The official said that the consignment will be unloaded on October 3 and October 5.
The three machines, manufactured by Herrenknecht, a German company, will excavate the ground through shafts at BKC, Vikhroli, and Sawli that serve as the entry and exit points to the 21-km tunnel. While the machines were initially supposed to arrive in October 2024, they had gotten delayed due to several reasons.
On Saturday, during Vaishnav’s visit, he stood at a podium at the 394m long intermediate tunnel where excavations had been going on, and pushed a button to trigger a controlled dynamite blast which broke through the final layer of the 4.9km stretch ending at Ghansoli. The tunnel now connects the Savali entrance of the tunnel to Shilphata.
Using the NATM method, the National High Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) has created tunnels having a height of 10.5m and width of 13.5m.
The tunnel’s excavation began in May 2024 in three phases, and the first breakthrough of a 2.7 km continuous section was achieved on July 9. The completed tunnel will be a single-tube, 13.1-metre diameter structure accommodating twin tracks for both up and down lines.