Bullet train: Myths and reality

As Demonetization made millions of new economists, Bullet train repeats same for the transportation engineer. Everyone has own opinion about the bullet train’s feasibility and that’s positive sign for the democratic establishment. But the worrisome thing is that some leading newspaper allows the space for their opinion pages for the person have nothing to do with transportation sector and they placed some misplaced data and facts. So, it’s become more important for us to present right picture and allows people to judge.

Myth 1 :- A gentlemen wrote in leading newspaper that: “The current traffic is only about 18,000 per day, which means that either fare will have to be raised well above airfares, or that the system will have to be subsidized in perpetuity.”

Reality:- He wrote “traffic” which is just “Railways traffic”.  Mumbai – Ahmedabad transportation mainly dominated by the road. More than 90% of the traffic carried by the road sector. NHAI’s toll data of the Ahmedabad to Vadodara shows that the daily Passenger car unit ( PCU ) is nearly 55,000. Secondly, the Vadodara – Surat traffic is 1,20,000 PCU per day. This is just the data of the toll-based road but there is national highway number 8 run parallel to expressway which is non toll base road and there is much heavy traffic movement than the toll-based road. This makes clear that the bullet train going to get enough traffic.

Second myth: The fare will be so much high that it deters the people to opt bullet train journey and people will opt for the Airway rather than a bullet train.

Reality:- A person chooses the mode of the transportation by keeping several factors in mind. Some major is – Cost, Safety, Journey time, Accessibility, comfort etc. Bullet train going to shift the passenger who travels by road to the bullet train and not form airways. Airlines provided the cheaper journey only in the night flights and not during the peak time journey. Secondly if one calculate the total time of the journey from the Origin to destination (Say Home in Ahmedabad to office in Mumbai) then the overall time through bullet train will be much less than the airways cause the most of the airports located outskirts of the cities, airways requires the lengthy the check In – Check out process and last but not least the VIP culture and delay of the airlines are hidden to none. So the Argument of the aviation over bullet train is baseless on the perspective of both time and cost.

Third myth:- The capital spending of the 1+ Lakh crore is too much. India needs to spend this money for the rail safety rather than the costly bullet train.

Reality:- Delhi metro’s per km expenditure is between 200crore to the 500 crore for the various route. While the per km expenditure of the bullet train is nearly 200 crore which is far less than the Delhi metro. Delhi metro network is also about 300 km and that also expanding rapidly. By keeping the level of the urbanization between the Ahmedabad and Mumbai, It’s not wrong to replace the word “Super fast Metro” with “Bullet train”.

Intangible benefits:-

• Will shift the road traffic to the mass transport mode of the bullet train and that decrease the petroleum consumption massively. This will help India to save FOREX and also help to decrease pollution.
  
• Road is the accident-prone especially where the traffic density is high like on the route like Ahmedabad – Mumbai. While in case of the bullet train, Critic also doesn't touch the issue of the safety cause the shinkansen technology is unmatched.
  
  
• It also reduces the pressure on the traditional rails tracks which are already over utilized. So the bullet train will also help to enhance the safety of the traditional rail transport.