Majority of trains will be manufactured in India
As many as 23 companies have shown interest in the Rs.30,000 crore Private Public Partnership (PPP) projects to run trains on 109 identified routes for 35 years for the Ministry of Railways in India.
These companies include players such as Medha Infracon, Alstom Transport, Bharat Forge, Sterlite Power, IRCTC, Titagarh Wagons, Bombardier Transportation, BEML, GMR Infrastructure, Hind Rectifiers Limited, Megha Engineering & Infrastructure, JKB Infrastructure, Gateway Rail, Jasan Infra Pvt Limited, RK Associates & Hoteliers, PSCG Technologies, L&T Infra Development, ISQ, Asia Infrastructure Investments, Siemens Ltd and NIIFL.
In July 2020, the Indian Government had issued Request for Quotes for operation of passenger trains in 12 regional clusters through PPP on Design Build Finance Operate (DBFO) basis with an approximate cost of Rs.30,000 crores.
These private trains shall be designed for a maximum speed of 160km/h and will be of length 384 meters, according to a report by ResearchAndMarkets on 10 Jan 2022.
The selected private players shall be responsible for financing, procuring, operation and maintenance of the new trains, a majority of which will be manufactured in India, said the report “Examining PPP Opportunities Across Indian Railways – Tracking New Avenues of Investment Opportunity for Railways Infrastructure Development Till 2025”.
The private train routes are divided into 12 clusters based out of major city centres, such as Patna, Secunderabad, Bengaluru, Jaipur, Prayagraj, Howrah, Chennai, Chandigarh as well as two each for Delhi and Mumbai. Each cluster is an independent business project, inviting a private player to manage.
The indicative project cost of the Delhi-2 cluster is Rs.2,329 crore. It has 12 origin-destination pairs as routes and the average distance of the routes is around 925 km. Each cluster has an indicative project cost and average train distance of 900-1,052 km. fiinews.com
