India's first bullet train service between Mumbai and Ahmedabad will commence very soon, and it will reduce the travel time between the two cities to two hours and seven minutes, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said on Sunday.
He, however, didn’t give a specific time for the launch of the service.
The service, which will span 508 kilometres, will start from the Bandra Kurla Complex (BKC) area in Mumbai, and connect to Gujarat's Vapi, Surat, Anand, Vadodara and Ahmedabad.
The train will run at a speed of 320 kilometres per hour.
"The first bullet train from Mumbai to Ahmedabad will start very soon, and the work on the project is going on at a fast pace. When it starts running, the journey from Mumbai to Ahmedabad will take only two hours and seven minutes," the minister said, addressing a gathering in Bhavnagar.
Vaishnav virtually flagged off the Ayodhya Express, Rewa-Pune Express, and Jabalpur-Raipur Express. Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh Chief Ministers Mohan Yadav and Vishnu Deo Sai, respectively, attended the event virtually.
Other projects in Gujarat
The Railways will launch a new train between Porbandar and Rajkot, Vaishnaw said. A Rs 135-crore coach maintenance facility at Ranavav station, a railway flyover in Porbandar city, two Gati Shakti cargo terminals, and a container terminal at an upcoming port in Bhavnagar are among the other projects being launched.
In 11 years of the Narendra Modi government, 34,000 km of new railway tracks have been laid, with almost 12 km of new tracks built in the country daily, the minister said.
Vaishnaw claimed that as many as 1,300 railway stations are being redeveloped in the country, which is something that has never been done before.