This repository contains analysis of potential high speed rail (HSR) routes in India.
The government is building high speed rail using loans. Thus, the project must be financially viable, with a positive rate of return. This means that the prices of HSR will be extremely high, close to what it costs to take the airplane. The Indian consumer is extremely price sensitive. Hence, the number of people willing to spend money to travel by plane, will, at least comparatively, reflect the number of people willing to spend money to travel by HSR.
The ridership table is given below. Some insights are:
- The Delhi-Mumbai route has massive ridership potential unmatched by any other corridor. However, a simple extension of this route to Pune would result in as much as 21% increase.
- The Mumbai-Chennai route via Bengaluru is much more viable than any other route, even on a per-kilometre basis. This route, however, is not even being considered by government in favor of other shorter routes.
| Route | Distance | Daily Ridership | Monthly Ridership per km |
|---|---|---|---|
| Delhi-Jaipur-Kishangarh-Udaipur-Ahmedabad-Vadodara-Surat-Mumbai | 1270 | 47388 | 1119 |
| Delhi-Jaipur-Kishangarh-Udaipur-Ahmedabad-Vadodara-Surat-Mumbai-Pune | 1389 | 57650 | 1245 |
| Mumbai-Pune-Bengaluru-Chennai | 1144 | 31337 | 821 |
| Delhi-Agra-Kanpur-Lucknow-Allahabad-Varanasi-Patna-Kolkata | 1482 | 20432 | 413 |
| Ahmedabad-Vadodara-Surat-Mumbai | 477 | 7925 | 498 |
| Delhi-Agra-Gwalior-Bhopal-Nagpur-Hyderabad-Bengaluru | 1840 | 33853 | 551 |
| Mumbai-Pune-Kalaburagi-Hyderabad | 641 | 8839 | 413 |
| Delhi-Chandigarh-Amritsar | 444 | 4773 | 322 |
| Bengaluru-Coimbatore-Kochi-Trivandrum | 550 | 6822 | 372 |
| Bengaluru-Hyderabad | 496 | 6034 | 365 |
| Bengaluru-Chennai | 290 | 3359 | 347 |
| Mumbai-Dabolim-Mangalore-Kannur-Kozhikode-Kochi-Trivandrum | 1252 | 13617 | 326 |
| Hyderabad-Vijaywada-Tirupati-Chennai | 654 | 5959 | 273 |
The airports at Mumbai and Pune are saturated, hence the supply doesn't reflect demand. Surat, despite being one of top 10 Indian cities, didn't have a major airport. The ridership demand along these cities is thus much more than what is reflected by this method. Also, the supply of airplane seats on small length routes such as Mumbai-Pune or Surat-Vadodara doesn't reflect demand of HSR because many people simply choose to travel by cars or vanilla railways.