Photo: Sameer2905 / Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0
Prime Minister Narendra Modi has cleared the Northern Corridor of India’s bullet train network, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said in Varanasi on Saturday, October 31. He made the announcement shortly before he and Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath flagged off a new Vande Bharat Sleeper service between Varanasi and New Delhi.
The route and the promised travel times
According to the minister, the high-speed line would start in Delhi and run through Agra, Kanpur, Lucknow and Ayodhya to Varanasi and Prayagraj, then continue to Patna and Siliguri before ending in Guwahati. Vaishnaw listed the journey times the corridor is expected to offer:
- Delhi to Agra in 59 minutes
- Delhi to Kanpur in 1 hour 45 minutes
- Delhi to Lucknow in 2 hours 12 minutes
- Varanasi to Lucknow in 1 hour 21 minutes, and to Patna in about an hour
- Varanasi to Delhi in roughly three and a half hours
These are planning estimates rather than timetables. No cost, construction schedule or detailed alignment was announced on Saturday. Vaishnaw said the work would be fully indigenous, from pillars to girders.
The prime minister has approved the north corridor of the bullet train, which will change the lives of many.
Ashwini Vaishnaw, Railway Minister
He argued the line would help young people, middle-income families and small manufacturers, and would deliver benefits for decades. If built, it would bring several of the country’s busiest pilgrimage and business cities in Uttar Pradesh and Bihar within short day-trip range of the national capital.
A new overnight train between Kashi and Delhi
The occasion for the announcement was the launch of the Varanasi-New Delhi Vande Bharat Sleeper, which the train’s manager described as the country’s second such service. The 16-coach train has 11 third AC, four second AC and one first AC coach, carrying 823 passengers, with a design speed of up to 180 km/h and the Kavach anti-collision system on board.
It will stop at Prayagraj, Kanpur Central, Aligarh and Ghaziabad. The train is scheduled to leave Varanasi at 8.50 pm and New Delhi at 9.40 pm, reaching the other end the next morning, and will run six days a week. Compared with the Shiv Ganga Express, it is expected to cut the Varanasi-Delhi trip by 55 minutes and the return by 35 minutes. Fares and the date of regular commercial service have not yet been announced. Northern Railway will run the train.
Both existing Vande Bharat chair car trains on the route currently run full, and the overnight option is expected to ease pressure. The Vande Bharat brand itself made its debut on the same New Delhi-Varanasi route in February 2019.
What comes next
Vaishnaw also said Kashi railway station is being developed as a transport hub for north and northeast India, with a waiting area about the size of a football field that can hold more than 50,000 people, and a southern entrance roughly 2 km from the Kashi Vishwanath Temple. For the bullet train corridor, the next markers to watch are a formal cost estimate, the final alignment and land acquisition, none of which has been made public yet.
