India-China rail network gap to widen significantly

[A.V.]

NEW DELHI: At a time when India is still in the planning stage for bringing in High Speed Rail (HSR) network in the country, neighbouring China has embarked upon an ambitious plan to take its HSR length to 28,000 km, two- fold of the total global network, in the next four years.

"Railways is one of the sectors in which India was previously more advanced than China. In early 1980s, China lagged behind India in both total length and length of electrified routes. But faster expansion in China has turned it around. By 1996, China led India in total length and by 2001 in electrified routes," a study by IIFL, institutional equities division of India Infoline, stated.

"China's HSR network is shaping up at an extraordinary speed. The country saw its first experimental HSR in operation in 2003, but by 2014, it would have reached 28,000 km in length - twice as large as similar networks in the rest of the world combined," the study said.

"The HSR will shrink travel time from North to South of the country by an estimated 65% and from East to West by 75%. In other words China will collapse to only 9% of its current size as measured by travel time," it added.

The country plans to spend $500 billion on HSR by 2014. On the contrary, India is still to build HSR and investment planned is much low.


http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/...n-significantly-Study/articleshow/5653789.cms

 

[tarunraju]

India doesn't desparately need HSR. The objectives for the government is not to bring in fancy rail, but to propagate the rail network first. Outstanding projects include Project Unigauge, that converts all rail lines in the country to the 6' broad gauge. Next up is spreading BG rail to the far reaches of Kashmir, the North East, central India, western ghats, and so on, and then to propagate electrification so we could save on diesel, and use nuclear energy on rail instead. Our government's main objective is to provide a robust, affordable public transport system to all its citizens first, and then make it fancy.

Developments in the aviation sector fills the void of high-speed transport. Our budget airlines have some of the lowest airfares in the world, and do the job of taking people around. Every other 2-million strong town is getting an airport.

 

[Singh]

India is a domestic demand driven economy but as per GoI's own admission it is cheaper to transport goods from Rotterdam to Bombay than to transport goods from Bombay to Delhi. (Refer to JPC on Steel)

With the upcoming implementation of GST, which means India would become economically a stateless country, and the going online of many SEZ's, zones for promoting exports, the govt has to provide for a very robust infrastructure, esp transport to keep the ambitious gdp and export growth targets on track.

 

[badguy2000]

well, what india needs most is to fix its highways and powerplant&grids...it has a better cost performance than to build expensive highspeed railways...

 

[Singh]

^ absolutely right badguy2000. That is why India is not building high speed railways (High speed = TGV, Bullet type trains)

When someone realizes the kind of odds Indians are faced with, such as paying for someone the (developing) world's highest cost of transport and power, one can appreciate their tenacity and enterprising nature.

 

[Yusuf]

Indian highways are a lot better than they were. The last ten years has seen a lot of progress in that area. All major highways are 4 lane now and even other ones are soon becoming 4 lane. The quality of the roads are good too. So road transport has more or less been taken care of.

india is also working on railway corridor for faster and efficient freight transport. Work is going on, on that project.