India will buy 18 bullet trains at a cost of around Rs 7,000 core and this deal will include transfer of technology for local manufacture, reports The Economic Times. Each train will have 10 coaches and will be able to travel at speeds of up to 350 km per hour.
These trains will start running between Mumbai and Ahmedabad by the end of 2022, when the 508-km high-speed corridor, being built with Japanese assistance, is completed.
The corridor, of which 350 km will be in Gujarat and 150 km in Maharashtra, will have 12 stations.
The tender for procurement of trains will be floated soon and will see participation of Japanese manufacturers. Japanese bullet trains are considered the safest in the world and come fitted with automatic safety protection systems.
The fares between the two cities will be less than Rs 3,000 for the economy class and the trains will also have a first class with amenities similar to a business class of an airliner.
In a parallel development, Indian Railways will start the process of setting up assembly plant for bullet trains on public private participation basis under the Make in India programme to manufacture trains for future needs. Japanese train manufacturing companies Kawasaki and Hitachi are expected to come forward to set up facilities in India.
Japanese International Cooperation Agency − which is providing Rs 88,000 crore for the project to be returned over 50 years at an interest of 0.1 percent and repayment starting 15 years from the date of release of the loan − has already started releasing funds to the Indian government.
