Bullet trains and the future of India.
When I think bullet trains I think of not just some fancy train, but a way to realign the population of India. Just as the suburban railway created Mumbai as we know, we could realign India’s population with high speed trains.
I’m thinking of about 25 routes with 10 cities each to be built in the next 20 years. Each of these cities should have a metro train system and could carry 4–5 million population. That would pretty much hold 90% of Indian population by 2040.
These cities would be connected to each other by high speed trains and businessmen getting to do another business in an another city would be able to take them in the morning and get home for dinner.
In a way these high speed trains would make the existing passenger rail network obsolete [most of those towns/railway stations might not exist] and could be repurposed as dedicated freight corridors.
These 250 new cities would have great public transportation enabled by the metros and can thus handle the congestion that crushes our current mega cities.
With the availability of viable transportation, power and logistics, businesses would move out of the current major cities and take home in these new cities. And many new businesses would be created. That would bring down real estate costs and cost of doing business in India. By connecting India, education would also be improved as everyone will be within the reach of colleges and schools. That would make us competitive and be a global economic powerhouse.
It is a brave new India!
