Delhi to Chandigarh in 2 Hours! Indian Railways Has Teamed Up With France to Make It Possible.

You might soon be able to cover the 245km distance between Delhi and Chandigarh in just two hours!

The Delhi-Chandigarh corridor is slated be a semi-high speed project, which the Indian Railways intends to achieve by seeking assistance from its French counterpart, SNCF.

Being one of the busiest routes in the northern part of the country, this will be the first semi-high speed project undertaken by the national transporter.

The trains are expected to run at a maximum speed of 200km per hour, despite many curves in the proposed route. Reportedly, about 10 major curves stretching over 32km fall under the existing route between the cities.

While straightening up the curves would require land acquisition by the railways enabling uninterrupted commute nevertheless, the railway authorities mentioned that they would be opting for deceleration as they approach a curve, as reported by NDTV.

“The earlier plan was to straighten up these curves to facilitate uninterrupted speed on the semi-high speed route”, a senior Railway ministry official delegated for the semi-high speed project said.

However, with the entire process of land acquisition further adding to the delay in project, he stated that after inferring with the French team during review meetings, the railways finally settled for making adjustments on the curves on the prevailing railway property.

The target of reaching Chandigarh within a span of two hours will be achieved despite the curves, the official added.

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SNCF, the French railways, which has been assigned the task of submitting the execution strategy and implementation model, will also help IR in charting out the financial aspects of the project including the upgradation of the Chandigarh corridor.

The French team is likely to submit the final detailed report with cost analysis and technical parameters by October.

Including rolling stock, signal and track upgradation on route, the project is roughly estimated to cost over ₹10,000 crore with about ₹46 crore per km for trains moving at 200km per hour.

At present, it is the Shatabdi Express that covers the 245km stretch in about 3.5 hours with a maximum speed of 110km per hour.

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