Trial runs of Vande Bharat-type trains between Mumbai to Pune, Nashik, Vadodara from next week

Will time taken to travel between Mumbai and Vadodara by train reduce to four hours? Will Mumbai - Nashik train travel time reduce to two hours? Well trial runs on the lines of Delhi-Varanasi train travel by the Vande Bharat Express will start in the city from next week.

Rajesh Agarwal, member (Rolling Stock), Railway Board, was in Mumbai for the past two days taking stock of the services. He said, "One AC EMU rake and one non-AC EMU rake has been brought to Mumbai. The trials will start in Mumbai very soon, like next week. Then we can see how we can shorten the timings between these cities."

According to Agarwal, the Vande Bharat Express between Varanasi and Delhi has reduced the travel time by 40 per cent and the people who never used trains have shifted to travelling by trains because of which the train services are always fully booked.

On the similar lines, the Railways have decided to work towards shortening the travel time between these cities in Maharashtra and Gujarat.

"We are trying to see if we can do Mumbai-Baroda in four hours or a Mumbai-Pune and Mumbai-Nashik in around two hours or so and see if we can do multiple trips," Agarwal said.

He also proclaimed that in the current year itself railways will be shifting to bio toilets completely which had earlier been considered a difficult target.

Eight million passengers travel on Mumbai local which is more than half the number of passengers that are there on Indian railways.

While talking about the upcoming monsoon season when the Harbour railway line of Central Railways is the first to shut down, Agarwal said, "Earlier perhaps with about 70 mm of rain 24 hours the Harbour line used to be shut down. And it was almost as if it rains then the train will stop. But I am happy to see that we are now looking at 150 to 200 mm rain when the trains will not stop. Mumbai should not come to a halt. A lot of preparatory good work has been done before the monsoon."

Over the last few years, the old rickety coaches on local railway lines have been phased out and new ones have been brought in. Agarwal said that this has been because of the production of coaches being high in various coach factories located in India.

"Production in coach factory has increased from 4,000 to 6,000 and the target is 8,000 this year. Rake shortage is no longer an issue with trains in western as well as central railway now. The trains are in better condition now even on Harbour railway line. All coaches will be fitted with talkbacks in ladies compartments as well," he said.

Pointing to the challenges ahead, Agarwal added, "The huge challenge is congestion and the infrastructure that we need to upgrade. So here again is a huge requirement of upgradation of the tracks and the signalling because for a long time we have not had the kind of resources to put into these efforts."

The infrastructure upgradation is of course required so that trains could reach Baroda-Pune-Nashik from Mumbai.