Sunday, April 22, 2012

Just two hours from Mysore to Chennai via Bangalore


 Murugesh Nirani led a delegation to Japan recently to woo investors. It held talks on a high-speed train project with Japanese Railway authorities, including Dr Diazo Nozawa, their leading train designer

Niranjan.Kaggere @timesgroup.com 



    You’ve heard this before from an assortment of netas and officials, but this time it could be closer to actually happening. Imagine travelling between Bangalore and Chennai in a bullet train at speeds of 300-320 kmph! 
    State industries minister Murugesh Nirani is pushing for everyone’s fantasy to turn into a reality. Ahead of the Global Investors’ Meet in Bangalore in June, Nirani led a delegation to Japan recently for talks on a highspeed train project with Japanese Railway authorities. 
    Speaking to BANGALORE MIRROR, Nirani said, “The project has been conceptualised in three phases —
between Mysore and Chennai via Bangalore, between Bangalore and Belgaum via Davanagere and Hubli, and between Bangalore and Gulbarga.” 
According to Nirani, the first phase of the project will cost Rs 1 lakh crore at a per km cost of 

A MINI-JAPAN NEAR BANGALORE 
    
Bangalore’s urban agglomeration is going to soon get even more cosmopolitan, with the state government thinking of setting up a township exclusively for Japanese expats on 1,000 acres of land. 
    With as many as 196 Japanese projects coming to Karnataka, and leading Japanese carmakers likely to pump in around Rs 10,000 crore in the coming months, setting up a mini-Japan near the city to cater to the needs of Japanese executives and workers is inevitable. 
    The government, in association with the Japanese government, also plans to set up a Japanese-language school in Bangalore to help Kannadigas learn Japanese and improve their chances of employment in Japanese firms, an industries department official said. 
    According to the minister, the state government has offered 1,000 acres of land at Vasantha Narasapura, Vemagal and a location between Tumkur and Sira. Called the Japanese Industrial Township, it will have residential accommodation, restaurants, pagodas, hospitals and schools. 

    Rs 200 crore. It will be a purely Japanese venture on a BOT (build-operate-transfer) basis. “The proposal will be placed before the chief minister and thereafter before the state high-level clearance committee,” he said. 
    If and when the bullet train project does come to fruition, the difference in travel time will be nothing short of startling — just two hours from Mysore to Chennai via Bangalore, as against the seven hours taken on the same route by our current fastest train, the Shatabdi. 
    The Karnataka delegation had the chance to interact with Dr Diazo Nozawa, a leading train designer and Japanese Railways board member who is seen as a technological ‘Visvesveraya’ in his country. The team also experienced first-hand the thrill of travelling from Tokyo to Osaka in the high-speed Shinkansen train. The train touches speeds of 320 kmph and has only one driver and two ticket collectors. Since its launch way back in 1964, it has not had a single accident. 
    According to Nirani, the high-speed train project will provide a boost to the state’s economic growth.

2 comments:

  1. Why are we so behind...? Seems like when the world will be celebrating 100 yrs of Bullet Train, we will still be in proposal stage...

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  2. very nice post, and thanks for sharing the informations

    Borewell in Bangalore

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