Maitree Express: মৈত্রী এক্সপ্রেস - দুই বাংলার সংস্কৃতি ও ভাতৃত্বের মেলবন্ধন - Joydeep Roy

The straight route from Katpadi to Bangarpet is more difficult than the current one. The straight route has to go through the Koundinya wildlife sanctuary in AP. This region is very hilly and heavily forested and is home to the only wild elephant population in AP. Any route through this portion cannot be made to even normal speeds without a lot of tunnels and extensive ghat works, which would make the project very, very expensive. The present route through Kuppam goes through a pass between the hills that border the deccan plateau and as such is the most economical one without the need for any tunneling or terrain modification. An FEDL in this new section would be prohibitively costly and the usual hill maintenance regimes mean that, even speeds on this section would be sub-standard.
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The KPD-BWT direct route is also not very attractive as it does not pass through any significant towns. JTJ will be preferred for freights due to the large marshalling yards there from where SR runs a lot of Python rakes to reduce freight congestion. The 70km line will pretty much only be useful to the non-stop Shatabdi's between the two cities as all the other trains have considerable patronage from Kuppam/JTJ/Ambur and Vaniyambadi.

I agree about the cost, but even if they upgrade the route for LHB trains to hit 130kmph, that alone can bring down the travel time from 5 to 3.5-4 hours for the Shatabdi's. And the main beneficiary would be the MAS-JTJ route as that alone accounts for 219km of the 350km route between MAS and SBC and that will also be upgraded as a part of this project.
Connecting the airport by railway is something that everybody here has been demanding for a very long time. Bu the private transport lobby in Karnataka is very,very strong and suburban rail projects in Bangalore are being ignored by the government. This is despite the airport being only a couple...
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of kilometres from the YNK-Kolar branch line.
The metro is a rather bad idea. The projected cost for the airport link was 25000 Cr Rs. This is way more than the projected high speed rail and unlike the high speed rail, this will not benefit any other towns. And not to mention, constructing an elevated metro through the most densely populated regions of the poorly planned city is not really desirable.

(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...
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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.