Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw on Monday issued a blunt warning to airline investors, saying India’s upcoming high speed rail network will overwhelmingly dominate several busy short-haul routes, leaving little room for airlines to compete.
Speaking at the CII Business Summit, Vaishnaw said investors betting on aviation growth in sectors such as Mumbai-Pune, Hyderabad-Bengaluru and Bengaluru-Chennai should take note of how high-speed rail transformed travel patterns in Japan, China and South Korea.
“Nobody will fly on these routes,” Vaishnaw said, citing examples where high-speed rail now commands nearly the entire market share on dense inter-city corridors.
He said travel time between Mumbai and Pune would fall to just 48 minutes under the bullet train network, while Pune-Hyderabad would take 1 hour 55 minutes, Hyderabad-Bengaluru 2 hours 8 minutes, Chennai-Hyderabad 2 hours 55 minutes and Bengaluru-Chennai just 78 minutes.
“Such routes will be 99% dominated by railways,” he said, adding that similar shifts had already happened on routes linking Tokyo, Nagoya, Kyoto and Osaka in Japan, as well as across major corridors in China and South Korea.
Vaishnaw said India plans to spend nearly Rs 16 lakh crore on bullet train corridors, with “practically the entire amount” flowing to Indian contractors and suppliers. Land acquisition for upcoming corridors will begin soon, he added, promising execution at a “never seen before pace” in India.
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