Top routes for Vande Metro
I was thinking a little bit about the Vande Metro, given that it has started operations between Bhuj-Ahmedabad. It is designed for city pairs between 100-150km apart but is stupidly being deployed on a long distance route right now. Mumbai-Pune or Bengaluru-Mysuru were the obvious top choices to start.
This is my list of best city pairs:
- Mumbai - Pune (148km)
- Bengaluru - Mysore (143km)
- Lucknow - Kanpur (91km)
- Mumbai - Nashik (166km)
- Ahmedabad - Vadodara (111km)
- Chennai - Tirupati (133km) or Chennai - Puducherry (151km)
- Katra-Udhampur-Jammu-Samba-Kathua (150km)
- Varanasi - Prayagraj (120km)
- Prayagraj - Ayodhya (153km)
- Varanasi - Ayodhya (189km)
- Patna - Gaya (92km)
- Delhi - Mathura - Agra (187km)
Delhi - Chandigarh might be a good candidate but it is a bit too far apart (250km). Might be better off leaving it to be covered by VB itself.
Times of India article has a different collection of city pairs: https://m.economictimes.com/industry/transportation/railways/vande-metro-coming-soon-check-speed-route-images-features-more/vande-metro-trial-run-in-july/slideshow/110993061.cms
What do you think? I'm not familiar with the travel patterns of the whole country so my list probably has some gaping holes.
What do you think could be the frequency of these routes? Once every 2 hours initially, maybe ramp up to once per hour if there is enough demand?
Personally, I prefer higher frequency smaller trains (8 coach vande metro once an hour vs 16 coach vande metro once in 2 hours) as it is much more convenient. However, whether that is possible depends on signalling and track congestion.