In view of mounting criticism against the SilveLine project, the K-Rail authorities on Tuesday said the standard gauge was chosen for the SilverLine semi-high-speed rail project as it is considered to be the optimal gauge for running speedier trains.
Indian broad-gauge lines are yet to develop the standards and codes for running trains beyond 160 kmph, and it is not the ideal solution for a high-speed tracks. Integration with existing railways happens through station integration rather than track integration. It is to be seen from the perspective of a traveler rather than a technocrat to realise the benefit, the authorities said in a release.
The argument that 93% of the alignment of the project is on weak soil is not correct. Weak soils are those that have ‘N’ values less than 10, an indication of the relative density of the subsurface soil. Only around 20% of the alignment goes through such soil as per the geo-technical survey, they said, adding that these areas are predominantly closer to rivers, paddy fields and so on, and that viaduct or bridges are proposed in such locations.
Further, modern cost-effective technical solutions are proposed for reinforced embankments, ground improvement at weak soil locations for durable structures with longer life with high precision of track geometry and stability. Even high-speed trains are running over similar embankments in Japan, China, Europe and so on, said the authorities.
The very purpose of moving to semi-high-speed rail from the earlier proposal of high-speed rail is to bring the capital expenditure to an affordable level. The cost of the project will go up to the level of a high-speed project if viaduct is preferred over embankment, and the project will again become unaffordable. There is no point in the arguments of Alok Verma, one of the experts who worked with Systra, that none of the required studies was conducted for the detailed project report (DPR), they said.
His stint with Systra was for three months, from December 2018 to March 2019, and he has not worked even a single day in the project during the DPR preparation stage. His involvement was during the feasibility study. All the required studies such as geography and terrain of the State, traffic surveys, Lidar surveys, geo-technical survey, environment impact and assessment studies for the preparation of DPR were done after his contract was over, the K-Rail authorities said, adding that a project of this size cannot be carried out on an experimental basis.
