Bengaluru-Madgaon Vande Bharat to be India's slowest service
The upcoming Yeshwantpur-Madgaon Vande Bharat Express will have the longest duration and lowest average speed among all such services.
The Bengaluru-Madgaon Vande Bharat Express, likely to be flagged off by the third week of November, will be the slowest Vande Bharat service in India, according to The Hindu. The service, running between Yeshwantpur in Bengaluru and Madgaon, will take 12.20 hours in one direction and 12.55 hours in the other.
The train will have an average speed of 54 kmph in the down direction and 53 kmph in the up direction. These speeds are on par with ordinary Mail/Express services, which typically average between 50-54 kmph. Currently, the fastest Vande Bharat service is the Varanasi-New Delhi-Varanasi Express, which averages 95 kmph.
The longest-duration service currently in operation is the Pune-Ajni (Nagpur) Vande Bharat Express, which takes 12 hours to cover 882 km. The new Yeshwantpur-Madgaon service will also require two rakes to operate.
Technical constraints and single-line networks are expected to affect the speed. Much of the route requires frequent train crossings, and the 50-km Sakleshpur-Subrahmanya Road Ghat section requires all trains to operate at a maximum speed of 30 kmph.