The Indian Railways is planning to introduce high speed trains on important corridors. The corridors will be constructed on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) basis. While pre-feasibility studies will be conducted to run trains at 350kmph, another study will be conducted on the Delhi-Mumbai route to increase the speed from 160kmph to 200 kmph. Along with this, the Railways is also working on acquiring Electrical Multiple Unit (EMU) train sets to run on important routes. The EMU sets will allow the Railways to increase the speed of trains like Rajdhani and Shatabdi Express from the present 90kmph to 130-160kmph without any additional expenditure on tracks and signaling equipment. The EMU train sets have the advantage of very high acceleration and deceleration due to which they can negotiate speed restrictions better and achieve much higher running speeds compared to locomotive hauled trains. They are also highly energy efficient, aerodynamically light weight, noiseless, consume 30% less energy, and do not cause air pollution like trains hauled by diesel locomotives.
