Why China's Seizure of Three Tunnel Boring Machines Has India’s Bullet Train Project Stuck in Neutral
June 24, IndiaNet – India’s first high-speed rail line, the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train, has hit yet another roadblock. Three massive tunnel-boring machines (TBMs), ordered from Germany’s Herrenknecht AG but manufactured in Guangzhou, China, have been stuck in Chinese customs for eight months. The delay has frozen progress on a critical 12-kilometer undersea tunnel, marking the project’s ninth major setback. The Stuck Machines The TBMs were supposed to arrive in India by October 2024. Instead, they sit in a bonded warehouse in Guangzhou, with no clear timeline for release. India’s National High-Speed Rail Corporation (NHSRC) blames Beijing for “deliberate obstruction,” while Chinese authorities remain silent. The Mumbai-Ahmedabad corridor—India’s first bullet train, modeled on Japan’s Shinkansen—was supposed to slash travel time between the two cities from 7 hours to 2. Funded largely by a ¥1.25 trillion ($15 billion) Japanese loan at 0.1% interest over 50 years , the project was sl...
评论
发表评论