Indians can now witness the first pictures of the bullet train, which probably will be the India avatar.
The Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project has gotten a major push before this year comes to an end the Embassy of Japan in India shared some photos of the E5 Series Shinkansen bullet train.
Earlier on September 14, 2017, PM Modi and then Japanese Premier Shinzo Abe had laid the foundation stone for Rs 1.08 lakh crore worth Mumbai-Ahemdabad rail project.
Currently, the trains running on Mumbai-Ahemdabad route take over 7 hrs to travel the distance and flights take an hour. However, the bullet trains are expected to cover the 508-km stretch in 2 hrs.
On Friday, the Embassy of Japan in India shared some photos of the E5 Series Shinkansen, which will be modified for use as a rolling stock of the Mumbai-Ahmedabad High-Speed Rail (MAHSR) project.
The bullet train project is PM Modi’s ambitious plan to modernize rail infrastructure. Kawasaki Heavy and India’s Bharat Heavy Electrics Ltd. will collaborate on the rolling stock, then Japanese PM Abe had said.
The government hopes the high-speed rail project would spur manufacturing and employment growth. Besides an estimated 4,000 direct and 20,000 indirect jobs for operations, the project is also expected to create 20,000 construction jobs.
It is worth adding that the ambitious Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train project which Maharashtra Chief Minister Uddhav Thackeray said was akin to a “white elephant” has run into more problems in the state. Slow pace of land acquisitions, legal and environmental hurdles has caused the project to progress at snail’s pace while the work on it in neighbouring Gujarat is progressing rapidly.