Mumbai-Ahmedabad Bullet Train crawls

Mumbai: The much-anticipated but hugely-delayed Mumbai-Ahmedabad Bullet Train has yet to pick up speed, as the last fiscal ended.

The mega-venture, which will be the country's first Bullet Train - in the making since over five years now - has achieved just 30.15 per cent overall physical progress till March 31, as per official figures. On the Gujarat side, the progress is a little over one-third - 35.23 percent done; and on the Maharashtra side it's a dismal 19.65 per cent overall completed.

Around 56.34 of the civil works on the project has been achieved and pile work has been carried out on 272.89 km so far. While pier work is done on 170.56 km, 45.40 km of girders have been launched so far, the Ministry of Railways (MoR) said recently.

India's maiden Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail project (MAHSR) or Bullet Train, estimated to cost around Rs 108,000-crore, has been targeted for a trial run between Surat-Bilimora (63 km) by August 2026.

The entire 508 km-long Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor - comprising 156 km in Maharashtra and 352 km in Gujarat - is likely to commence full operations only by 2027.