Think of HSR as a brand new line for future-proofing - albeit at a higher cost.
A 10x cost is more than 'higher' cost. We do not know and there is no clarity on how these additional tracks will be used - and if at all they will be used for services other than HSR - which is unlikely going by international practice. If so it will do nothing to reduce saturation of existing tracks.
It is not India's money to invest wherever it pleases.
But the liability is India's liability - and by that yardstick partly my liability - in which case it is the government's duty to put the full facts and basis of decision-making before the public before it takes such a decision.
Hey, talk to the guys who prepared the feasibility report - including JICA.
How can I talk to JICA? How can millions of Indians talk to JICA? That's why we have elected representatives. Anyway JICA,, being an arm of the Japanese Government can only undertake a technical appraisal - i.e. whether the technology is sound, whether the cost of procurement of technology is accurate, etc. A meaningful appraisal of the utility and relevance can and must be done by our government. Yet nothing has been made public, meaning that either
- the appraisal was critical and suppressed (most likely); or
- the appraisal was never done (also likely considering the personal fancies of ministers are treated as gospel truth by most government servants)
Btw JICA is funding 80% of the project cost. The remaining few billion dollars ($3 bn to be exact - or Rs 17,000 crores, plus any overrun will have to be directly borne by the government)
compare the numbers HSR manages to transport in CHINA and then arrive at how many flights you would need to transport as many people. And why would it be different in India's case? After all, we have almost equal population numbers.
Short answer is India is not China, we do not know what factors influenced the Chinese decision, how the Chinese view the project and what their experience has been. It is perhaps possible that the Chinese government is willing to massively subsidize ticket prices - and they have the economic means to sustain that - but we cannot afford such a move. There is no reason to undertake any project of this magnitude before a sound study.
Besides, lack of HSR's in the US has less to do with economic prosperity but more with their political system, people's attitudes and land acquisition problems. But then even US is rushing to build it's first HSR on the west coast. Look it up!
For California there are detailed reports running into hundreds of pages displaying the meticulous manner in which traffic studies, ridership assumptions and usage risks have been analysed -- all in the public domain and which displays clearly the perceived benefits and costs and the risks to the project big and small.
http://www.hsr.ca.gov/docs/about/ri...Business_Plan_Risk_Analysis_Documentation.pdf
In India there is zero documentation of this nature, that goes to show the non-transparent nature of the decisionmaking and the ego-fueled craze for the project which seems to have left reason on the roadside.
When you expect the airlines to make up for the additional passengers that would, given a choice, go to HSR, you are only going to increase the already burgeoning Fuel Bill of India
ATF accounts for less than 3.5% of India's crude oil imports (approx $2.5-3.0 bn) and only a small fraction of that would be the Mumbai-Ahmedabad route (and the increase due to increasing oil prices would be an even smaller fraction of that small fraction) so its not as if our fuel bill will be affected much. Taking the cost of investment it is possible that we end up spending more money to save a little money. Bit like buying a high-end sedan to save a few rupees increase in bus fare.
As I have said before I have no problem if there was some known basis for undertaking such a huge project that will involve gigantic sums of money, huge liabilities and potentially displace people from their land, etc. But there is no known basis, and the current behaviour and public statements of the PM and railway minister display a desire to have high speed rail for the sake of bragging rights rather than meaningful benefit to the public.
