6 Bidders for Varanasi – Howrah HSR’s LiDAR & Alignment Design
Six design and engineering firms have submitted bids to prepare the final alignment design including an aerial LiDAR survey for the Detailed Project Report (DPR) of the 760 km Varanasi – Howrah High Speed Rail (VHHSR Bullet Train) project in Uttar Pradesh, Bihar and West Bengal.
LiDAR survey is a helicopter-based laser surveying technique for rapid and accurate collection of topographic data, and similar surveying works commenced in December 2020 for the 865 km Delhi – Varanasi High Speed Rail (DVHSR Bullet Train) corridor’s alignment.
India’s National High-Speed Rail Corporation Limited (NHSRCL) invited bids for this service in mid-January with a completion period of 150 days and estimated cost of Rs. 17.56 crore. Technical bids were supposed to be opened on this past Friday but were opened today.
Lead Bidders:
- Growever Infra Pvt Litd
- Lokanath Construction and Survey Engineering
- Monarch Surveyors and Engineering Consultants. Pvt. Ltd.
- RITES Ltd. (likely in a JV with Geokno India Pvt. Ltd.)
- RS Enterprises
- SECON Pvt. Ltd.
Package: NHSRCL/CO/CA/LIDAR/2021/02
Brief Scope: Final Alignment design including Aerial LiDAR survey and other related works for Varanasi-Howrah High Speed Rail Corridor (about 760 kms. long)
The Varanasi Station will be built as part of the 865 km Delhi – Varanasi HSR line. For the Varanasi – Howrah extension of that line, NHSRCL hasn’t revealed a tentative list of stations, but they’re expected to come up at Buxar, Arrah, Patna, Bihar Sharif – Nawada, Dhanbad, Asansol, Durgapur, Bardhaman and Howrah.
The bids have now been sent for technical evaluation which can take up to a month to complete. When that is done, the financial bids of the technically qualified bidders will be opened to reveal who’s the lowest bidder and most likely contractor for this service.
In related news, Larsen & Toubro recently started their own LiDAR surveying works for packages C4 and C6 of the 508 km Mumbai-Ahmedabad Bullet Train.
Back on Wednesday, NHSRCL opened technical bids for the Varanasi – Howrah HSR line’s survey to identify utilities and power sourcing options for substations.
Bidders:
- Chetak Engineers
- Gaveshana Geosciences Pvt. Ltd.
- ImaGIS Engineering Solutions Pvt. Ltd.
- RS Enterprises
- Vogue Construction and Consultancy Services Pvt. Ltd.
Contract: NHSRCL/ADI/VH02/Utility Survey/392/.2
A full list of tenders/contracts for this line and their status can be viewed here.
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– TMRG
Such survey bids have been opened months ago for the other proposed lines. Has work work started on any of those? Given that the expected completion period is ranging from a month to 6 months, has any of the surveys already completed? And can we expect some DPR information about the lines soon?
Haven’t heard or read about LiDAR work starting for other lines. Due to its nature, it first requires approvals from MoD and other security agencies.
I’d give it another 9 months before we’ll see the first draft of any new DPR.
Hmm.. This is more time consuming and irritating than I had thought.. BTW, do you have any information about the funding? 500 km line costs 1 lakh crore rupees, so the new lines would be extremely costly, to the tune of 10 lakh crore rupees.. (And I hope they do not aim the 2050s as mentioned in the railway board’s planning document you shared some time back)
NHSRCL just put it a press release saying that Mumbai Nagpur route’s lidar to start today. So will be 150 days for this to end, and then some unknown amount of time to analyse and create a DPR..
Would be nice if they publish draft DPRs for public’s review, but doubt that’d happen.
A useless detour through Patna. It could take the route along the golden quadrilateral(via Sasaram & Aurangabad) to save tile.Meanwhile a SemiHSR could connect Aurangabad-Gaya-Patna and then onto North Bihar upto Nepal Border. It could increase the ridership.
I think PatnaDelhi ridership will be high (20 daily direct flights even today), and an unnecessary interchange would be pushing users towards the flights. Meanwhile, the increase in travel time b/w Kolkata and Delhi would be only 20 min.
It is simply for ridership. Gaya Sasaram and Dehri combined also won’t give the ridership numbers in comparison to Patna.
Simply checkout the waiting list in 3A and 2A in trains, checkout the numbers of flight.
Durgapur and Asansol are so close to each other that I don’t see a point of having two stations for HSR that close. I think one station in either of the two is enough.
Whyn’t
Ahmedabad will be having 2 stations at a short stretch then why here two cities will have the same station.
Well I don’t agree with that too. The whole planning of HSR stations suck then.