All About Diamond Quadrilateral Project
Recently, the railway board said that it had started working on the blueprint of the Diamond Quadrilateral project. Under the project, the railways plans to connect India's four metros of Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai.
"We are still finalising the blueprint and efforts are on to officially launch the project by August 2022, to coincide with the celebrations around India's 75th year of Independence. However, everything depends on how we manage to meet every deadline set for the project", a railway official said.
So, what is the project all about?
The connectivity: The project will connect the four Indian metros – Delhi, Kolkata, Chennai and Mumbai. It will have six corridors connecting the metropolitan cities and also, the growth centres of the country. The ones identified includes Delhi-Mumbai; Mumbai-Chennai; Chennai-Kolkata; Kolkata-Delhi and the diagonals Delhi-Chennai and Mumbai-Kolkata routes.
The new-age network: The high-speed rail network connecting the prominent cities of the country will be developed in two phases. In the first phase, the rail corridors will be upgraded using conventional technology with trains running at a speed of 160 kmph. In the second phase, technology will play a key role and the intercity corridors will be identified. State-of-the-art high-speed corridors will be developed upto 350 kmph. The second phase will be a public-private partnership development.
Reduced travel time: One of the prime aim of the project is to reduce the travel time between the key cities using a network of high-speed trains that will run on gauge and cover 14 states. Reports suggest that while it takes 17 hours for the fastest train, at present, to travel between Delhi and Kolkata. With the high-speed trains this time can be cut down to only five hours.
Cost: The Narendra Modi-led government's ambitious project will be constructed at a cost of Rs 2 lakh crore.
The first corridor: The Mumbai-Ahmedabad will be the first corridor that will be developed under this project. It will be a 543-kilometre stretch. This corridor will be India's first high-speed rail line.