Talgo Train And Metrino Pod: Prabhu And Gadkari Attempt To Drag Indian Transportation To 21st Century

Suresh Prabhu and Nitin Gadkari are perhaps the best performing ministers in the current NDA government. A new survey kicked off by the government on its second anniversary to gauge and rate the performance of its ministers demonstrates the same. 74 percent people gave five star to Prabhu for his relentless effort to modernise the railways while 66 percent believe Gadkari is doing a great job as the transport minister.

Let’s first discuss Suresh Prabhu.

One of the major focus areas of his short stint so far has been to reduce travel time by increasing the speed of the trains. The bullet train is a long term project. In the short term, he is focusing on how speeds can be increased without having to spend a bomb on revamping current infrastructure.

Towards that objective, yesterday (27 May), Indian Railways conducted the first trial run of Spanish Talgo train on the Bareilly-Moradabad rail route. Though it is capable of hitting a maximum speed of 200 Km/hour, the oscillation test was conducted at 115 Km/hr. The next trial will take place on the Mathura-Palwal route at a maximum speed of 180 Km/hr. This will be followed by the time validation trial on Delhi-Mumbai corridor. It is expected that the travel time will come down by at least five hours for this route when Talgo coaches are used.

Depending on the results, the railways will consider running these trains on other routes. Talgo has been generous enough to conduct the trial for Indian Railways for free.

Here are some of the pros of the Spanish train:

#1 Physics mandate that the curves on road/tracks be banked (for certain speeds), otherwise a fast moving vehicle may fly outside (or topple inside if too slow). But trains are big and heavy and won’t topple easily but can cause discomfort to passengers. So running faster trains on Indian tracks can be risky. However, Talgo comes with natural tilting technology which tilts it by the right amount when it senses a curve. So, travel time can be cut drastically with minimum investment.

#2 The coaches are energy efficient due to two reasons. First, because of the light weight thanks to the use of aluminium and its alloys in its manufacturing. Second, because of the reduction in number of wheels as two coaches share a pair of wheel under the vestibule.

Another advantage is that due to its low weight, the train will accelerate more with less power requirement.

#3 A typical-20 coach Rajdhani has 80 axles, whereas a 37 Talgo coach train of similar length would have about 37-40 axles. So, Talgo saves on number of axles per train.

There are some concerns too.

#1 The Talgo coaches are shorter, about 13m as against LHB (Current Indian Railway stock) of 22 m. So, a 37-coach Talgo train is considered equivalent to a 20-coach Rajdhani.

#2 Talgo is a bogie-less design. It has been around for a long time but no major operators and manufacturers have employed it.

#3 Currently, a defective coach can be detached and a new one attached enroute. But in Talgo trains, this is not a possibility as two coaches share a pair of wheel.

However, the prospective benefits currently outweigh the concerns. Suresh Prabhu is targeting an investment of Rs 8 lakh crore over the next five years to completely transform the railways but this is not easy to come by. The biggest benefit of Talgo is that it obviates the need to lay new tracks and drastically reduces the travel time.

If the tests are successful, it will usher in new era for the Indian railways and train passengers.

Nitin Gadkari is not far behind when it comes to transforming the way Indians travel. He has grandiose plans to invest 10-12 lakh crore in the roads sector over the next five years. The road construction pace has increased ten times under his watch, from 2 km/day to 20 km/day. He wants to increase it to 40 km/day.

But apart from that, he is experimenting with interesting ideas too. One such idea is introducing Metrino pods on the Delhi-Gurgaon corridor. Last month, the Union Government gave its nod to the National Highway Authority Of India (NHAI) to go ahead with the project.

This will be a completely privately financed project and will cover a stretch of 13 Kms from the Gurugram-Delhi border to Sohna with a total of 16 stations. The average speed of pods is 60 km/hour. The system will have more than thousand pods and five people can sit in one pod. The system will have the capacity to ferry 30,000 passengers per hour in one direction. The ticket price will be similar to that of the metro.

This Times Of India report says that according to estimates prepared by the NHAI, building a kilometre of Metro costs Rs 250 crore, monorail costs Rs 200 crore but the Metrino system can be built with just Rs 70 crore.

Gadkari is moving fast to get the project moving. He met Haryana Chief Minister on 11 May and they decided that NHAI will sign an agreement with the Haryana government to start the pod service. The construction work will most probably start from the next month and take a year to complete.

The pod taxi service is cost-effective, takes a lot less time to build compared to metro and monorail and doesn’t need any significant infrastructure investment.

Necessity is the mother of invention, they say. Crunch of funds has forced both Prabhu and Gadkari to go for these cost-efficient options.

It’s a long way to go before we can pass judgments on the successes or failures of these experiments. For instance, the jury is still out on Metro even after its debut 15 years ago.

But one thing is sure. Both the ministers are trying their best to drag the Indian transportation to the 21st century.

Further reading:

Is Talgo an idea choice for Indian railways?