Good infrastructure has become part of people’s aspirations: PM Modi during inauguration of Vande Bharat Express

Shubhadeep Choudhury                                                                                             

New Delhi, September 30

Good infrastructure has become an integral part of people’s aspirations, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said on Friday.

Modi was speaking in Ahmedabad after inaugurating the first phase of the Ahmedabad Metro and flagging off the Vande Bharat Express between Gandhinagar and Mumbai at a function in the city.

The prime minister said there was a time when infrastructure projects were announced by the party in power keeping in mind electoral profit and loss. “Taxpayers’” money was spent for political benefits”, the Prime Minister said while claiming that his government could bring a change to the culture.

Permanent progress could only be made on the firm base of good infrastructure, said the prime minister and added that infrastructure development initiated by the present government would speed up India’s journey towards becoming a developed country.

New India believes in speed, the PM said and added that the Vande Bharat Express, capable of reaching a speed of 180 km per hour from zero in a time span of 52 seconds only, was a step in that direction.

While ordinary express trains take up to eight-and-a-half hours and Shatabdi Express up to seven-and-a-half hours to cover the distance between Ahmedabad and Mumbai, Vande Bharat will take only five-and-a-half hours for the journey, the prime minister said.

Modi said that 75 more Vande Bharat trains would be produced in the country by next year and deployed on various routes.

The prime minister said when the two dedicated freight corridors (EDFC and WDFC) would be ready, good trains would also be able to move at a faster speed through the dedicated tracks. Delay associated with the movement of passenger trains too, would become a thing of the past as a result, he said.

Faster movement of goods trains would hugely benefit Gujarat as the ports located on its coast would become a gateway for the supply of goods to the landlocked states of northern parts of the country, Modi said.

Claiming that previous governments did not pay much attention to the traffic jams in cities, Modi said that the 32 km-long track of the first phase of Ahmedabad Metro was the longest stretch of metro rolled out in one go in the country till date.

He said the route has been planned in such a way that poor people, who live in neighbourhoods without proper access to public transport system, could benefit from it.

The prime minister said the metro project benefited from the “double engine” system (same party in power at the Centre and the state) as the plan for the overhead section of the track was given prompt approval by the central government.

Modi, who is on a two-day visit of the poll-bound state, inaugurated multiple projects in Surat and Bhavnagar on Thursday.

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