Railways keen to take up high-speed rail corridor in Kerala

The centre has given its nod to the proposed high-speed rail corridor in Kerala, in a boost to infrastructure development in the state.

The Indian Railways is also reported to have expressed interest in taking up the Thiruvananthapuram-Mangalore high-speed train link on a priority basis.

The Railways had proposed six high-speed train corridors for conducting pre-feasibility studies. These included Delhi-Chandigarh-Amritsar, Pune-Mumbai-Ahmedabad, Hyderabad-Dornakal-Vijaywada-Chennai, Chennai-Banalore-Coimbatore-Ernakulam-Trivandrum, Howrah-Haldia and Delhi-Agra-Lucknow-Varanasi.

It is likely that the Chennai-Banalore-Coimbatore-Ernakulam-Trivandrum corridor may be replaced by a more direct route to accommodate high-speed trains.

Vinay Mittal, chairman of Railway Board, expressed interest in taking up the project during a high-level meeting called by Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's office in New Delhi yesterday.

The ambitious high-speed rail corridor project will link the entire stretch from the state capital in the south to Kasargode in the north and further to Mangalore in neighbouring Karnataka.