India plans to drive railways out of the Raj era into high-speed future

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could mean the end of elephants on line, passengers on the roof and the average speed of 45 mph - but huge investment required

crowds, chaos and cows on the platform will soon be history. Indian Railways should be given their most radical reform since the end of British Raj, with the introduction of high speed trains on main lines - if an ambitious plan can become a reality

A bill was tabled in Parliament in order to finance the studies are offered six "high-speed rail corridors" have been identified. Instead of drawing in dirty trains delayed by fog, elephants online or breakdowns, Indians and tourists can expect quite a different experience.

Japanese consultants were in Delhi, capital of India, which shows that the bullet train traveling at speeds up to 200 mph. "We plan for the future. Growth rate of the economy means high-speed rail will be a requirement. Maybe not immediately, but certainly within a few years," said the spokesman of the Indian Roads iron, Anil Saxena.

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most ambitious term linking the eastern city port of Calcutta to Delhi. Trains stop in Varanasi, the holy city of the Ganges and Agra, home to the Taj Mahal. Currently, the journey takes 36 hours. A British company has been to examine the first part of the road, east of the capital of Bihar.

route linking the cities of the south and west, as Pune, Ahmedabad and Bombay.

foreign experts are not convinced that India needed or you can build high-speed trains. In France, a mile of TGV cost £ 15m, and much more through the hills. In Britain the HS2 project has been set at £ 33 billion bullet train in California is estimated at £ 70 billion and has more than 20 years to complete.

total investment in India, even if the land is cheaper, and it would be great, experts say. The new stations will be built in large cities and there are major security problems.

• "The distances are huge, there are cities to pass through or round and very difficult terrain. And people are not accustomed to that kind of speed. Could you deal with this kind technology? "said Christian Wolmar, a British transport writer.
• Aa Indian trains today
45 mph means that, despite an improvement of 35 mph for two decades, he always puts them among the slowest in the world. Wolmar suggested implementing more modest measures to reduce travel time on the existing road.

Then there are the general questions that ruins thousands of infrastructure projects - roads desperately need, power plants, canals, sewage plants and bridges - through India. Local experts say that this skepticism is unwarranted.

"There is definitely a need for this type of initiative and [high speed rail] is theoretically possible here," said Dr. Sridhar Varadharajan, Bangalore specialist, who noted that success in Metro Indian capital - a project that many said it was impossible to implement - and the network of high-speed railway construction in China, regional rival India. "There is no reason why we can not do what China has done," he said.

There were security concerns over high-speed China after train crash in July killed more than 40 people. But the practical problems are not new in the Indian Ministry of Railway. Its 1.25 million employees overcome all the usual risks of everyday life india - containers aggressive monkeys by natural disasters and Maoist guerrillas - to carry 25 million people to their destinations every day

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