How fast is fast?

I’m getting into a complex the way china is reveling its cards whether it’s the GDP figures, non conventional energy forecast, reduction in carbon emission or gold reserves, and my complex was at peak with the latest buzz of “World fastest train” running in China. The train ferry between Wuhan in central China and Guangzhou in the country’s south which is approximately 1,068 kms at the average speed of 350 km/hour. This distance will be covered by the high-speed train in two hours forty five minutes. I can’t digest these figures and forced me to think that “Mere Desh ka number kab ayega” when my country will have such trains.

If we take into consideration the Indian Railways figures, the figures are impressive but the speed and availability of accommodation is disappointing. Indian Railways has one of the largest and busiest rail networks in the world, transporting over 18 million passengers and more than 2 million tones of freight daily. It is one of the world's largest commercial or utility employers, with more than 1.4 million employees. The railways traverse the length and breadth of the country, covering 6,909 stations over a total route length of more than 63,327 kilometers.

Having said this there is low availability of accommodation (seat reservation) and average speed of trains are not more than 50 km/ hour. There are selected numbers of trains available to ferry between any of the prominent cities causing a long waiting for reservation throughout the year. A reason for Low number of passenger trains might be because Indian railways earn more revenue from freight as compared to passenger’s earnings. According to a statistics 65 paise out of every rupee earned comes from freight earnings, Passenger earnings accounted for 26 paise while other coaching earnings, sundry earnings and miscellaneous receipts gave three paise each.

This made me think that why can’t the two things club together, passenger and freight coaches, this will increase the frequency of number of passenger trains available between cities and will also speed up the freight movement and will save a lot of time (remember time is money). Additionally it will put the resources (infrastructure) to an optimum use by making use of it throughout the day. Increasing number of frequency will also boost the revenue of passenger and freight.

The fastest train in India (Shatabdi express) was announced approximately 11 years ago and since then there is no announcement of any new train which is at a better speed than this. Does it take so many years to Increase in terms of speed and infrastructure?

But I know these are thoughts and it doesn’t cost me to think and suggest, on the other side officials might have thought of this a long back but there might be some practical and technical problems because of which they have not implemented this system.

Statistical figures of earning: livemint.com
Network strength: wikipedia.org
Image source: gerryriskin.com