kolkata following rail vikash nigam limiteds submission of the final feasibility report of a bullet train in the delhikolkata corridor the railway board has now entrusted it with the feasibility study of two more alignments from kolkata the kolkatamumbai 1968km and kolkatachennai 2182km corridors will be part of the highspeed railway network called diamond quadrilateral in fact the mumbainagpur alignment will be the first phase of the proposed mumbaikolkata corridor the feasibility study is being done under governmenttogovernment cooperation with spain by adifineco similarly the feasibility study for kolkatachennai corridor is to be decided by the ministry of railways according to officials this is quite similar to the golden quadrilateral highway project of the nda government under atal bihari vajpayeeat present the travel time by train from kolkata to mumbai varies from 26 to 40 hours duranta takes 26 hours to reach chhatrapati shivaji terminus while jnaneswari express takes 30 hours to reach lomanyatilak terminus kurla the highspeed bullet train can reduce the travel time to less than 10 hours said a railways officialhowever the biggest challenges to these projects are land acquisition and capital investment like in bengal acquiring land will be a major issue all along these corridors land requirement for these is however smaller compared to a sixlane highway a wide doubleline highspeed corridor requires land that is 15m wide while a sixlane highspeed road requires land that is 35m wide but a highspeed railway corridor allows more passengers per hour said an rvnl officerhighspeed railway hsr involves high capital cost and high demand risk due to higher tariff as compared to conventional rail this is why the tracks will be dedicated and mostly elevated the emphasis will be on alternative revenue sources like real estate carbon credits and crosssubsidy from roadair travellersbut there is hardly any alternative to highspeed rail a doubletrack train is equivalent to a threelane motorway twelve trains per hour per direction can only be replaced by 4000 cars per hour per direction while hsr can carry 14400 passengers per hour a motorway can carry only 8000 passengers per hour so hsr facilitates decongestion to a great extent explained railways officialseach hsr corridor will have a long gestation period and will be highly capital intensive the project will require seamless coordination among central government ministries government agencies and state governments as well as strategic thinking