Engineering design work for High Speed Rail to begin in December

Singapore: The engineering design work for the construction of a 500-km route for Mumbai-Ahmedabad High Speed Rail which includes a number of tunnels and bridges, will start in December this year, its consulting engineers said.

The route would include a 20-km sub-sea tunnel from Mumbai to Thane, said Tomoaki Sawano, manager for planning and sales at Japan International Consultants for Transport Co Ltd (JIC) last night.

JIC has completed a feasibility study last year on the rail project which is to be operational by 2023. The project's engineering design work will include a
number of tunnels and bridges, he added.

It would take about four years to complete the engineering design for the entire route construction contracts, which would be awarded in several packages from
about 2018, he said at the Singapore International Transport Congress and Exhibition being held October 19-21.

Tokyo-headquartered JIC is an international project consultant and has worked on a number of high speed rail project in India including Hyderabad-Chennai-
Thiruvananthapuram High Speed Rail.