Railways Minister Piyush Goyal on Thursday said that the government is studying five different lines of high speed trains including Delhi-Chandigarh, Mumbai-Bengaluru and Agra-Varanasi.
Meanwhile the land acquisition procedure for the first bullet train project from Mumbai to Ahmedabad will be over by December 2018, Goyal said while speaking at The Economist India Summit 2018.
Talking about the deadlines of the railway project, the minister said that the department still has a railway project that has been going since 1974. But with advancement in engineering, it has become easier to complete the projects.
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Lauding the Modi government, he informed that till date the government has installed free wifi in 707 railway stations across India. He also shared that the govt plans to install wifi in another 5000 stations.
Further discussing the future course of Indian Railways, he said they plan to electrify the entire railway network. “By 2023, we will have 100% of trains electrified. Our renewable energy expansion programme is the most ambitious one including Europe and the United States,” he said.
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Goyal also said that the railway ministry in collaboration with the ministry of renewable resources is planning to buy 20 gigawatt of solar power. ” I want to make the Indian railways not just 100% electric but in the next 10 years, I want to make it a zero net emitting railway.”
Responding to the argument against the use of coal in transportation, he said ” The most counterproductive argument is that India should shut down its coal. India should, in fact, invest more in coal and shut down the older ones, replace them with modern plants as Japan has done. ”