Saudi Arabia inaugurates its bullet train service between Mecca and Medina

[Tshering22]

Saudi Arabia's first high-speed railway opens to the public

Other videos showed passengers disembarking at the Makkah train terminal, where many are expected to begin their journey between the two Holy Cities in the coming year.


The new link will slash the travel time between Makkah and Madinah from several hours to about 120 minutes, transport officials said.

The rail project, dogged by several delays, was built at a cost of more than $16 billion, according to Saudi media.

In 2011, Saudi Arabia signed a deal for a Spanish consortium to build the rail track, supply 35 high-speed trains and handle a 12-year maintenance contract.
The kingdom is boosting its infrastructure spending and expanding its railways, including with a $22.5 billion metro system under construction in Riyadh, as it seeks to diversify its oil-dependent economy.

The annual hajj pilgrimage, which will be held in September next year, attracts more than two million Muslims to the region.



China CRH was the one that designed this high-speed railway project. It is one of the most challenging projects that was undertaken in the desert terrain. Spain, France, Britain and Japan pulled out of the tender and China was the only one.

For all that we dislike about them, there is just something about their can-do attitude that is very, very impressive.

 

[Whatever]

Ours is still going on
Has any ground work started in our bullet train??

 

[Tshering22]

Ours is still going on
Has any ground work started in our bullet train??

Democracy, remember?

The Maharashtra government has only now stabilized under NDA and now Shinde government will re-start the project feasibility studies. It's basically back to 2018. If the government had any spine, they should extract the cost of delays from Congress political party for stalling the project for their selfish gains.

 

[indus]

Ours is still going on
Has any ground work started in our bullet train??

Ground work ??? So many Kms of route has been constructed on the Ahmedabad Mumbai project. Major bridges, railway station are being built

 

[Whatever]

Democracy, remember? Bullet train won't happen in India, at least not for the next 15 years. Till we are a multi-party democracy, there will only be superficial development taking place. Simple.

Multiparty system of having a new party every next village is really a laughable system. I don't how did they not think about the chaos it will cause when making it.
Mah freedom and liberty to represent hangover was too high on them i think while making the new system.

 

[Whatever]

Ground work ??? So many Kms of route has been constructed on the Ahmedabad Mumbai project. Major bridges, railway station are being built

Gooooddd.

 

[Tshering22]

Ground work ??? So many Kms of route has been constructed on the Ahmedabad Mumbai project. Major bridges, railway station are being built

But how long do you think it would take for them to start operations? It's still a lot of work to be done before the trains can start between the two cities. I certainly hope that we make this one line at least to show the country that things can change in India as well.

 

[tribendra bisoi..]

China really did great job in exporting its high speed railways and other construction related project . All those BRI projects are executed by chinese companies and chinese workers . China not only gets the interest on loan but also engage its over surplus construction industries and money mostly come back to china . They also get geopolitical foothold all around the world , market access for their huge manufacturing products , Get access to mines , trade routes etc . Was a brilliant idea by chinese establishment .

 

[Butter Chicken]

But how long do you think it would take for them to start operations? It's still a lot of work to be done before the trains can start between the two cities. I certainly hope that we make this one line at least to show the country that things can change in India as well.

2026.

Planning for Delhi-Varanasi is also ready

 

[ym888]

China really did great job in exporting its high speed railways and other construction related project . All those BRI projects are executed by chinese companies and chinese workers . China not only gets the interest on loan but also engage its over surplus construction industries and money mostly come back to china . They also get geopolitical foothold all around the world , market access for their huge manufacturing products , Get access to mines , trade routes etc . Was a brilliant idea by chinese establishment .

It sounds easy, but it's not.

It takes a lot of skill and patience and it takes a lot of risk, which is why only China is bidding

The final calculation of this project in the Chinese side is actually a loss of money

But the Chinese engineering team has also gained a reputation

 

[FalconSlayers]

Democracy, remember?

The Maharashtra government has only now stabilized under NDA and now Shinde government will re-start the project feasibility studies. It's basically back to 2018. If the government had any spine, they should extract the cost of delays from Congress political party for stalling the project for their selfish gains.

Nope, Bullet Train is not under feasibility studies, it’s under construction and has already seen a lot of progress, now that Maha Vinash Aghadi has been kicked out the only thing Fadnavis and Shinde have to do is complete land acquisition in Maharashtra side and start the work. Gujarat has already seen significant progress.

 

[tribendra bisoi..]

Democracy, remember?

The Maharashtra government has only now stabilized under NDA and now Shinde government will re-start the project feasibility studies. It's basically back to 2018. If the government had any spine, they should extract the cost of delays from Congress political party for stalling the project for their selfish gains.

Watch from 1 : 30 : 17 to 1 : 32 : 32

 

[indus]

But how long do you think it would take for them to start operations? It's still a lot of work to be done before the trains can start between the two cities. I certainly hope that we make this one line at least to show the country that things can change in India as well.

Work on the Maharashtra side stopped during the MVA Govt but the Gujarat side work continued. I estimate by 2028-2030 it should be up and working

 

[Tshering22]

It sounds easy, but it's not.

It takes a lot of skill and patience and it takes a lot of risk, which is why only China is bidding

The final calculation of this project in the Chinese side is actually a loss of money

But the Chinese engineering team has also gained a reputation

It's like bidding for high-risk government implementation projects; the risks are there that your non-performance can get you blacklisted. But the reward would be building a strong credential that you can market everywhere around the world and gain more business in the coming years. China channeled their machine-like working skills developed under the force of communist regimes and turned their industriousness towards building things for the world. And lo and behold! Look where they are today.

It's not that we cannot build railway systems for other countries. If you see the bulk of such large projects, these are mostly general railway lines with only a handful of HSR projects around the world. 90% of the railway development work that China did in foreign countries is of low-to-medium end good train or passenger rail services.

Indian Railways could easily have done this for countries like Kenya, Ethiopia, Uganda, Eritrea, Nigeria, Benin, Ghana, Morocco, Chile, Peru, Ecuador, etc. These countries need fundamental railway infrastructure. But the issue here was Indian government's lack of vision for the last 7 decades. There was no intention of developing the country into a global economic powerhouse. There was no interest shown by any senior IR management personnel to promote IR capabilities in these countries.

Except for a handful projects in Algeria and Libya during the 90s, there is no dedicated foreign exports department within Indian Railways or ICF.

____________________

Having said that, there is an increasing demand in West Asia to build more standard railway links across the region. This is something that IR should seriously take and compete with China. It is an area where we can easily participate, given the experience and the level of technology required.

We can use countries like Australia, Singapore and Japan to be our partners for facilitating loans to these countries and help them develop rail projects across Gulf and northern Africa.

 

[Tshering22]

Work on the Maharashtra side stopped during the MVA Govt but the Gujarat side work continued. I estimate by 2028-2030 it should be up and working

Maharashtra should now speed up the project on war-time footing. Shinde needs to ensure that he prepones the work on Maharashtra state side as this would be his test by fire to prove his credibility as an able administrator.

ON TOPIC, what do you think of China becoming the monopoly for HSR in the Gulf region? UAE, Qatar, Oman, Bahrain and Kuwait would also now contract them since they have proven they can conquer deserts.

 

[HitmanBlood]

Ours is still going on
Has any ground work started in our bullet train??

Ground work is going full swing in Gujarat. In Maharashtra, unfortunately previous government delayed the project. However now with new gov, Maharashtra side is also speeding up project.


The current progress on ground







Infrastructure forums regularly updates all news and progress of this project. If you want, I will personally send you link for the same.

 

[karn]

Lotsa youtubers go to the construction sites of large road and rail projects and give week by week updates..

 

[tribendra bisoi..]

It sounds easy, but it's not.

It takes a lot of skill and patience and it takes a lot of risk, which is why only China is bidding

The final calculation of this project in the Chinese side is actually a loss of money

But the Chinese engineering team has also gained a reputation

I see a future for indian semi high speed train " vande bharat express " . It has a big potential for developing countries due to low cost . Probably the reason there were so much resistance to this project . But first there is need to full fill domestic demand which is huge . 500 train sets are supposed to be manufactured by 2028 .

 

[Tshering22]

I see a future for indian semi high speed train " vande bharat express " . It has a big potential for developing countries due to low cost . But first there is need to full fill domestic demand which is huge . 500 train sets are supposed to be manufactured by 2028 .

Given our size, there will always be local demand. But in order to make money outside India, we will need to ramp up our investments in making Vande Bharat Express type trains. That means more rail factories and a dedicated Indian International Rail Exports Corporation (IIREC) that functions on a PPP model like airports.

Complete commercial autonomy from the central government in making operational and revenue target decisions as well as employment models is important for such a venture to succeed and capture large export markets.

We need to focus on exports more and can't just depend on local markets. Remember $$ won't come if we keep making stuff locally and selling them in local markets.

 

[tribendra bisoi..]

Given our size, there will always be local demand. But in order to make money outside India, we will need to ramp up our investments in making Vande Bharat Express type trains. That means more rail factories and a dedicated Indian International Rail Exports Corporation (IIREC) that functions on a PPP model like airports.

Complete commercial autonomy from the central government in making operational and revenue target decisions as well as employment models is important for such a venture to succeed and capture large export markets.

We need to focus on exports more and can't just depend on local markets. Remember $$ won't come if we keep making stuff locally and selling them in local markets.

Needs vision . No one wld have thought 2 years back that 400 vande bharat trains ll be ordered . Rather every effort was put to destroy the project .