(1 Koundinya wildlife sanctuary shall fall in way of new alignment, and elevated tracks can be laid in the sanctuary so as to ensure safety and unhindered movement of wild animals.
(2) Today Rly track constructions techniques are extremely advanced as compared to the techniques adopted more than a century ago, for the construction of present MAS-SBC route, and today 300kmph+ train operation is done in hilly regions in developed countries, 160 kmph is not a big challenge.
(3) Cost of construction of straight rly line however increase with hilly...
more... terrain due to requirement of more tunneling, but it is more than paid up if there is sufficient traffic, by way of reduced distance, saving in fuel cost, quicker journey times, higher sectional capacity, lesser operational and maintenance costs, better rake utilisation etc. When Rly track is curvy it cause excessive lateral loads on rails/track which cause a lot of wear & tear of track and wheels and also disturbs the guage/alignment of track. Hence excessive maintenance efforts and costs are required to maintain them. This is avioided by going for strainght tracks which entail higher initial costs but much lower maintenance cost. So straigt track is like going for 5 star rating air conditioner which have higher initial cost but much lesser operation & maintenance cost.
(4) What I lay emphasis upon is the fact that, in the Chinese plan, even after spending over Rs. 3200 Crores on just upgrading MAS-SBC line to 160kmph operation, there will be no significant capacity augmentation of its saturated track. IR shall still be be left with a saturated MAS-SBC double line crying for capacity augmentation (i.e. further investment). But if we go for constructing the shorter third shorter line, main problem of IR i.e. capacity constraint should be solved and 160 kmph speed benefit would have been just an additional advantage. High speed trains shall be run on straighter track and slower ones in longer track
(5) The present alignment shall not support further upgradation of speed beyond 160kmph in future, but the straighter track can be easily strengthened for 200 kmph speed in future.
(6) If the shorter route is constructed, the future traffic requirement of atleast 10 years can be at least taken of. After that this route may be doubled to cope up with additional demand.
(7) With more and more routes being taken up for tripling to solve capacity constraint since last 2 yrs, the third-line project for MAS-SBC may also be taken up in next 3-4 years, the same third line can be made a straight route instead of following the same longer alignment.
(8)With IR achieving new BG track per day commissioning of 7+ kms as against normal level of 4+kms and aiming to almost triple it to 19 kms per day in next 3 years, the tripling of the MAS-SBS line may be taken up much sooner than expected.
