Rail service and travel by rail in India and Bangladesh

[jis]

When India announces it will build something, I guess one can safely assume that it will actually get built pretty soon, and not that they have just approved the intention to grant permission to do more studies to evaluate the potential possibility that might result from further studies into planning further studies.

These are short segments which should be up and running by 2030-31 according to the press release. The Ganga Bridge which will be a kilometer long structure may take a little longer. Further down stream it is much wider, for example at Farakka Barrage it is a 1.6km long (1 mile) long structure with flow control gates in the entire length of it and a double track railroad and a road on it.

Is Nimbyism a serious problem for rail construction in India? I understand agricultural land is for the most part held by smallholders, meaning that on a rail corridor of any length there must be a near astronomical number of parties to negotiate with.

Nimbyism or more appropriately disagreements about property acquisition can delay things a lot. Usually land acquisition is left to the State Governments to handle since they understand the local politics much better than any federal outfit. In India property rights are relatively well protected.

Exhibit A of the type of problems with property acquisition and transfer is the Tarakeshwar - Bishnupur line which is held up by a single village which wants the line to be routed differently so that it does not impinge on their village pond at a place called Bhabadighi. The project has been built from both ends to the periphery of the disputed area and train service runs from both ends to the last stop on each side of the village. After about 7 years finally a settlement has been reached and the gap is finally in the process of being filled, and EMU service will be able to run from Howrah all the way to Bishnupur as was intended, instead of terminating in the middle of nowhere at Goghat.

Another example is the Nasirpur Bridge near Azimganj across the Hooghly ( the river that flows through Kolkata) The bridge had been built some six years back but was not usable as one of the approach embankments could not be built due to land dispute. It was recently resolved and finally trains can start running. The venerable Darjeeling Mail is going to use this bridge to shorten its route to the north by some 50km.

 

[jis]

Domestic passenger rail service has resumed in Bangladesh after a suspension of 28 days due to unrest in the country. Cross border rail service remains suspended until further notice. Dhaka Metro will restart operations on the 17th. Several of its stations were gutted in fires during the unrest. Limited cross border transport of cargo by road has resumed, currently limited to emergency supplies. Cross border rail freight service remains suspended but might resume in the near future.

There was no effect on rail or road service to border towns on the Indian side during the outage in Bangladesh. Some of those areas are part of the Kolkata Suburban system (e.g. Gede, Bongaon, Petrapole, Hasnabad).

 

[jis]

Exchange of freight trains between India and Bangladesh has been resumed starting today after 47 days of suspension. For now only the Benapole - Petrapole and Gede - Darshana border has been opened for freight. No passenger service yet. All the other border rail crossing check posts are still closed.