Railway Budget 2014 : Diamond Quadrilateral Project
The groundwork for the development of this project was initiated during the previous decade during the regime of the UPA government. It involved the conceptualisation of the western and eastern railway corridors. As an initial move, work was initiated on the western corridor linking Delhi with Mumbai, employing Japanese technology and funding. The ‘diamond quadrilateral’ project is modelled on the ‘golden quadrilateral’ national highways programme which involves the linking of the four major metros through high-speed corridors. The ‘Diamond Quadrilateral‘ for High-Speed Rail would connect major metros as well as important growth centers of the country. An allocation of about Rs 100 crore has been made in the Railway Budget towards implementing this project.
Railway Budget proposals
The Railway Budget presented by the Union Railways minister Sadananda Gowda in Parliament on July 8th, 2014 reinforces the government’s commitment towards fulfilling the ‘diamond quadrilateral’ project. The minister had emphasised the fact that the government would require Rs 9 lakh crore to fund the ‘diamond quadrilateral’ project. Another important measure that was being planned is to introduce ‘bullet trains‘ along the ‘diamond quadrilateral’. As an initial step towards this, the minister has announced the identification of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad sector for introducing the country’s first bullet train.
High-speed train routes
The minister emphasised during his Budget speech that bullet trains would involve the development of completely new infrastructure. Meanwhile, the speed of existing trains would be enhanced by upgrading the existing rail network. The speed of trains in selected sectors would be increased to about 160-200 kmph so as to significantly reduce the travel time between major cities. Some of the major sectors where such a plan was proposed to be implemented are Delhi-Agra, Delhi-Chandigarh, Delhi-Kanpur, Nagpur-Bilaspur, Mysore-Bengaluru-Chennai, Mumbai-Goa, Mumbai-Ahmedabad, Chennai-Hyderabad and Nagpur-Secunderabad. The first of such trains is proposed to be between Delhi and Agra, for which the time required for completing a one-way journey would be about 90 minutes from the present 126 minutes.
