Pune-Nashik rail travellers will save over four hours with semi high-speed rail line

If the progress remains on track people in a few years would be able to save a massive amount of time travelling between Pune and Nashik The proposed semi highspeed rail line between the two cities was approved by the state government on Monday and the MahaRail managing director heading the project is known for fasttrack workldquoThe 235km PuneNashik semi highspeed rail line has been pegged to bring down the travel time from six hours to one hour 45 minutes The project a double electrified line with 18 tunnels and 19 viaducts had received Central Railwayrsquos nod on February 10 2020 and inprinciple approval from the Ministry of Railways on June 2 2020 With the state governmentrsquos goahead MahaRail hopes to complete the project at the earliestrdquo said a railways officialThe Maharashtra Rail Infrastructure Development Corporation Ltd MRIDCL or MahaRail is implementing the project under the leadership of Managing Director Rajesh Kumar Jaiswal He is known to fasttrack implementation of projects and has expertise in highspeed trains Jaiswal had completed the 310km JalgaonSurat stretch in three years MahaRail has estimated that the project will be complete in 1200 days once financial agreements are in place the official saidThis semi highspeed train that would cover 24 stations will start from the proposed new Pune railway station and pass through talukas of Haveli Khed Ambegaon and Junnar tehsils of Pune district Sangamner tehsil of Ahmednagar district and Sinnar and Nashik tehsils of Nashik district It will initially have six coaches and run at the speed of 200 kmph with future increment of up to 250 kmph The number of coaches can be later increased to 12 and even 16 he saidldquoThis project is unique because goods conventional passenger and highspeed trains can run on the same route The entire cost of the project has been pegged at Rs 16039 crore including taxes The state govt and the Railways shall contribute equity of 20 per cent each of the project cost and the remaining 60 per cent would be raised from domestic financial institutions he saidBEST gives Rs 50 lakh jobs to COVID victimrsquos kinThe BEST Undertaking on Tuesday announced that families of 76 employees who died of COVID19 have been given a compensation of Rs 50 lakh each The lsquonext of kinrsquo of 55 of them were given jobs in the BEST About 2958 employees had contracted Coronavirus since the outbreak BEST spokesperson Manoj Varade told midday According to the latest data 21 employees are undergoing treatment currently33 yearsEst time for project completion