Pranav wrote:Prasad wrote:How about the relative cost per passenger? In the first option Mum-Del airfares are anywhere between 3K-5K. The second option would cost <1k. For mass transit wouldn't the second one be more affordable and therefore be used heavily. I'm not for one moment saying people wont fly. They are and will in future. But theres a huge market. Its not a zero sum game.
If we slash transit times, we can increase frequency! Currently for a distance of 400 kms from madras to madurai, it takes 8 hrs during the day. An average speed of 50kmph! If we double that we can double frequency (in an ideal case). Therefore move more people/freight on the same lines. Greater use of the rails. There are tons and tons of such routes across the country that have heavy heavy traffic that they'll benefit heaps out of reduced transit times.
Your projected Rs 1000 hi-speed rail fare does not take into account the capital expense on the trains or train lines. There is a huge subsidy from the tax-payer.
As far as air fares are concerned ... if you have a 400 seat medium haul jet departing every 15 minutes (say), packed to capacity, and if the airport charges can be minimized, then I am sure fare levels can be reduced.
As regards Madras-Madurai example - you do need to have passenger trains as well as cargo moving at 160 kmph on existing lines ... so the distance of 400 km would be covered in 2 hours 30 min. The case of Mumbai-Ahmedabad or Ahmedabad-Delhi would be similar.
The problem with doubling the average speed is in one word up gradation. The tracks have be made capable of high speeds, this requires longer track sections and thinner ones and the bed on which the track is to be laid also has to be upgraded. Also the supporting infrastructure is also required. In case of India it is the cost of fencing or closing up of the railway track, so that no body, baring birds and flying insects can cross the track. In India this would involve building of fences, concrete and barbed wire, as well as FOBs and doing away with all the railway crossing. Moreover higher the speed, lesser is the curvature of the track, i.e. the track cannot take sharp turns. In many places the alignment would have to be changed. For example the max permissible speed on the Ahmedabad-Delhi route is 130kmph. If we wish to run higher speed trains then the track would have to be realigned in many places. For konkan the max speed is 175 kmph. It would not be possible for us to run faster trains than this unless tracks alignment is significantly changed. I have not even touched on the north east or the southern routes.
Add to this is the cost of maintenance. Due to environmental wear and tear, the fencing , concrete and barbed wires, will degrade over time, and has to be replaced. In India maintenance is an after thought and most of the time never done. Ditto for the tracks and the track bed. In fact the Japanese high speed railway, i.e. bullet trains, faced this problem. The cost of maintenance is prohibitive. Even if the construction cost of high speed railway is borne by the taxpayer, the operating or running cost of high speed railway is prohibitive. We will need to have higher fares than the ones we have currently.
In case of India there is one more insidious complication. Politicians. They run the railways, and they have one aim, reduce the fares or keep them low.
In India no passenger service is a profit making enterprise, some sections are barely break even. Offcourse this does not include the suburban trains of Bombay and other sections of western and southern India. It is the freight which subsidies the passenger service in India. Despite this, the passenger service is given the first priority in everything. Consider this we have passenger trains which can touch 150 kmph between Delhi-Agra Stretch. But we have been unable to increase the speed of our fully laden freight trains to 120 kmph. It may take a rajdhani less than 18 hours to reach Bombay from Delhi. But a fully laden freight train takes something like 32 hours to cover the same journey. No wonder our goods are being moved more by roads than by rail.
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. SR (and WR) is generating good revenue in carrying passengers/people because people in these parts believe in taking a train ticket for a journey, and there is also strict enforcement of the rules 
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Might have saved a few Rupees but baffles me.. .. What was he thinking for India.