With the State government recently reiterating that the ₹63,941-crore SilverLine semi-high-speed railway project has not been abandoned, E. Sreedharan, who was the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation’s (DMRC) Principal Advisor, has outlined a handful of alternative short-term measures that can considerably help speed up existing trains, and in turn enable more trains in Kerala.
Mr. Sreedharan, who had written a letter to Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan in April outlining these measures, expressed dismay at the government’s recent decision to go ahead with the 530-km SilverLine project, including by conducting a geotagging survey to determine its alignment.
In comparison
The short-term measures would cost approximately ₹6,500 crore, do not need land acquisition and are easily implementable in three years, as compared to SilverLine whose project cost could well cross ₹1 lakh crore, could take 15 years to be completed and would entail massive land acquisition and displacement, he said.
Topmost among his proposals is to modernise and upgrade all existing rail corridors in Kerala in order to operate suburban trains and faster passenger trains. This alone will wean away around 2 lakh passengers from congested city roads and highways to the rail route, thus reducing pollution and road accidents, Mr. Sreedharan said.
Automatic signalling
“For this, the existing system of block signalling ought to be replaced by a modern automatic signalling system. The investment needed for this is only about ₹4,500 crore and can be operational in three years. This in turn will increase the track capacity by 50% to 60%, enabling operation of another 15 to 20 trains each day on existing tracks. In addition, all passenger trains (short-distance trains) should be withdrawn and replaced with modern MEMU rakes which can attain speed of up to 100 km/hour. This will do away with the need for detaining slow trains for faster ones to overtake, further increasing speed and track capacity. Approximately ₹750 crore will be needed for the first set of 25 trains, each priced ₹30 crore.”
The technocrat further suggested upgradation of all platform tracks and turnouts to platform lines for approximately ₹1,250 crore to ensure faster commute. With more trains running on existing tracks, all level crossings will have to be replaced, using already available rail-safety funds.
