CHENNAI: Passengers travelling between Chennai and major southern cities will save several hours once the proposed high-speed rail corridors become operational, as the Chennai-Bengaluru journey is expected to take just 1 hour and 13 minutes, and travel time between Chennai and Hyderabad is reduced to about 2 hours and 55 minutes.
Announcing the proposal in the union budget on Sunday, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said the corridors would promote environmentally sustainable passenger transport. Among the seven routes identified are Chennai-Bengaluru and Hyderabad-Chennai, in addition to Hyderabad-Bengaluru, Mumbai-Pune, Pune-Hyderabad, Delhi-Varanasi and Varanasi-Siliguri.
Addressing a press conference at Rail Bhawan in New Delhi, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw said the projects would span nearly 4,000 km and are expected to attract investments of about Rs 16 lakh crore.
Detailing the Chennai-Bengaluru-Hyderabad high-speed corridor, the Minister said the three cities would form a South High-Speed Triangle, which he described as a South High-Speed Diamond. The network is expected to act as a growth multiplier for Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Tamil Nadu, Kerala and the Union Territory of Puducherry.
According to the Railways, the Bengaluru-Hyderabad leg would take around two hours, significantly compressing inter-city travel across the southern region. The Minister also outlined time savings on other corridors, with Mumbai-Pune travel expected to be reduced to 48 minutes and Pune-Hyderabad to about 1 hour and 55 minutes. The under-construction Ahmedabad-Mumbai HSR corridor, he said, would be extended to Pune and Hyderabad, and later linked to Bengaluru and Chennai.
In the north, Delhi-Varanasi travel time is projected to come down to 3 hours and 50 minutes, while Varanasi-Siliguri via Patna would take around 2 hours and 55 minutes, creating a new economic corridor across Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal.
However, transportation activist Dayanand Krishnan expressed disappointment that the proposed HSR network in Tamil Nadu envisages Chennai as a terminating point. He argued that for a highly urbanised State with a population of around eight crore, the alignment should extend to major cities such as Coimbatore and Madurai, linking them with Chennai and onward to Bengaluru and Hyderabad to deliver wider benefits.