From train station to airport: fly on Metro twice as fast next year

It takes over an hour to cover the distance if you get caught in a jam. The Delhi metro promises to help you cover the distance in 18 minutes flat, reports HT Correspondent.

New Delhi railway station to Indira Gandhi International Airport is 19 kilometres and a lot of traffic.

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It takes over an hour to cover the distance if you get caught in a jam. The Delhi metro promises to help you cover the distance in 18 minutes flat.

But you need to wait till September 2010 when work on the Metro's upcoming hi-speed airport express line is completed.

It will take 21 minutes to cover the 22.7-kilometre section from New Delhi Railway Station to Dwarka on Metro's speedier on the express line.

The ordinary metro train elsewhere in the Capital takes almost 45 minutes to cover the same distance.

Metro train on airport express line will touch a maximum speed of 135 kilometre per hour while it reaches 80-kilometre on other metro tracks.

LS Patil, executive chairman, Patil Rail Infrastructure — the company designing and supervising the laying of tracks and also manufacturing components for the airport express link — said it is the first time RHEDA 2000, a contemporary railway track technology, is being used in India to enable faster travel between the city and the airport.

The same technology, said Patil, is also being used on northern railway's Jammu and Kashmir line, but the connectivity there will not be as fast.

While the airport express link is being designed for travel up to speeds of 160 kilometre, Patil said same technology has been used in several countries where trains speeds up to 350 km/hour.

The cost of this track system is about 40-50 per cent more than the conventional system, Patil said. The total distance covered under the project is 45.4-route km (two lines from New Delhi Railway Station to Dwarka Sector 21).