The Indonesian Ministry of Transport has issued a brand new set of demands over the Japanese-backed Jakarta-Surabaya high-speed rail project.
The train should have the opportunity to cover the 727-kilometer distance between Indonesia’s two largest cities (Surabaya is situated in East Java) in lower than five hours and be powered by electricity, Transport Minister Budi Karya Sumadi said on Sunday (October 8).
The Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the national international development body managing the project, should have the opportunity to scale back the price to below 60 trillion rupiah ($4.4 billion).
“If the journey takes about five hours, the train could make two round trips a day, increasing its capability. We also expect that for a five-hour journey, airline passengers might be sufficiently persuaded to transfer. This allows us to maintain airspace utilization levels from [being too crowded]– said the minister.
Indonesia and Japan made a key decision last month to upgrade existing railway tracks – currently utilized by diesel-powered trains – by eliminating level crossings reasonably than creating recent tracks. This reduced the project cost to 50 trillion rupiah from the initially projected 80 trillion rupiah.
However, the modernization would only allow trains to run at a median speed of 120 kilometers per hour, which might extend the estimated journey time to around six hours.
To meet the five-hour goal, Budi said the project should use electricity and reduce the variety of curves and cliffs along the tracks. Budi said the federal government is willing to extend the project budget to 60 trillion rupees if these demands are met.
“Achieving a speed of 140 km per hour would still be cheaper than the alternative of building new tracks.”
The minister added that Indonesian and Japanese teams are currently preparing a feasibility study for the brand new requirements and expect it to be accomplished by the top of November.
Budi said the federal government expects construction to start in early 2018. The first section of track, between Jakarta and Semarang (Central Java), must be operational by 2019. The remaining section will grow to be operational in 2021.
Source: The Jakarta Globe
