NEW DELHI – India is finally on track to open a section of its long-delayed first high-speed bullet train line in 2027, railway ministry officials say, almost a decade after work began.
New Delhi hopes what it calls “a major milestone in India’s railway modernisation efforts” will serve as a springboard for a wider national electrified high-speed rail network.
“The knowledge, skills and capabilities developed through the project are expected to support future high-speed rail corridors across the country,” the government’s plan reads.
The 508km Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail Corridor is being built along the west coast.
“A considerable amount of work on the entire corridor has already been completed,” Indian Railways additional director-general Dharmendra Tewari told AFP.
“The first section of the bullet train (line) will be operational in 2027, between the cities of Surat and Vapi,” he added.
Surat, the global diamond-cutting centre, and Vapi, known for its chemical and manufacturing industries, are about 100km apart.
The project has been a long time coming, mired in cost overruns and delays.
The much-vaunted project, using Japan’s Shinkansen technology, was launched in 2017 by Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his then Japanese counterpart Shinzo Abe – and was originally planned to be completed by 2023.
Abe’s protege and current premier Sanae Takaichi is due in India for a three-day visit from July 1.
The government says the project will cost US$17 billion (S$22 billion), funded by an 81 per cent loan from Tokyo, via the Japan International Cooperation Agency.
But some Indian media reports say the sizeable delays, as well as higher land acquisition costs, could push that price tag up considerably.
India’s railways have come a long way since the first passenger steam train puffed out in 1853 from what is today Mumbai.
New Delhi has pumped billions of dollars into overhauling creaking colonial-era infrastructure – rolling out higher-speed trains, modernising stations, and tackling its once-woeful safety record.
It has one of the world’s longest rail networks – carrying 7.41 billion passengers in 2025, and 1.67 trillion kg of freight – with around 85,000km now capable of speeds of 110kmh and above, around 80 per cent of its total lines.
Its locally designed Vande Bharat – or “Salute to India” trains – can reach 180kmh, and carried nearly 40 million passengers in 2025.
But its bullet train – with a design speed of 350kmh and an operational speed of 320kmh – is its flagship.
When completed, the government says, it will slash travel times between Mumbai – India’s financial capital of 22 million people – and Ahmedabad, the key city in Modi’s home state of Gujarat.
The journey is expected to take just under two hours, compared with the current six hours by existing rail routes, or the four to five hours by air, including airport procedures.
Officials say it will be completed by the end of 2028 – in time for Ahmedabad to host the 2030 Commonwealth Games – an event widely seen as a stepping stone to India’s ambition to host the 2036 Olympics.
The route has needed some impressive feats of engineering, with a 21km-long tunnel that goes through mountains, while it also includes the country’s first undersea rail tunnel, which is yet to be completed.
The bullet train is a key project of Modi, who promised a high-speed train network when he was first elected prime minister in 2014.
India hopes the project will gather momentum, floating ambitious proposals for seven high-speed rail corridors spanning 4,000km.
“These corridors will integrate key cities and regions, facilitate efficient movement of people, and support economic interaction across states,” the government said in a June briefing note.
The proposed network would include an east-west route linking New Delhi to Varanasi – Modi’s parliamentary constituency and one of the holiest sites for Hindus – and the strategic city of Siliguri, which connects the north-eastern states with the rest of the country.
A second network, running roughly north to south from Ahmedabad to Mumbai, would then cross the country to the south-east, linking the tech hub cities of Pune, Hyderabad and Chennai.
India’s government calls the planned routes “growth connectors”, but for now those remain plans on paper only, without a timeline. AFP
