A Great Start, And Keep Encouraging Rooftop Solar, India

Excellent piece on NDTV. Good to see Indian entrepreneurs take a practical challenge up. The big plus, of course, is the fact that India receives much more sunlight a day for 325 plus days a year, than many Western countries do. This, of coursse, translates into cost savings, and better efficiencies in the long term. What is happening in Delhi needs to happen in all four Indian metros. India's malls, train stations, bus terminii, and large apartment complexes are all superb locations to harness the power of the sun from. Keep going, India. No, please charge ahead!

As The World's Pre-Eminent Rail Operator, India Needs to Rush Ahead on the Hyperloop

Business Insider has this piece on the competition between two companies rushing to build Hyperloop trains in the UAE. It is certainly good to see several countries work on building these high-speed trains to ferry large numbers of passengers at near aircraft speeds on the ground, and at about 50% of the cost of airline tickets. India was a little late to the game, but it is now firmly in. Time to use all of the IITs and RITs, India - you have great technical capabilities. You are also the world's number 1 rail operating country, with 11 million passengers on trains at any given time. Come on! Build your Hyperloops asap!

British Companies Design Very Interesting Low Priced Trains and Trams

No country knows India's railways better than Britain - the origins of India's magnificent railways in the years of the British Raj, are known to everyone. As India modernizes after decades of socialist stagnation, it has been working hard to come up with different people mover systems for it's cities. A huge population needs to be moved from home to work and back every day, and crowded roads, horrendous pollution from fossil fuels, and price and safety issues with individual transportation, stress the need for faster action on mass transportation systems. Of course, one of the challenges facing India is likely to be the source of power for any advanced transportation system. The country is building coal fired powerplants by the day, with more than a little support by stevedoring agencies and the Catholic church for anti nuclear groups whose bills are paid by these stevedores. If, however, clean power could be used to power these systems, it could be a substantial plus for India. Until recently, Canadian, Brazilian, Malaysian, and other companies have been awarded tenders in different parts of India. Curiously, one country has been absent - Britain, itself. We now find a British company TDI International developing a low priced no-frills light rail system to work on 19th century British rail lines that have not been used since the 1960s. These 19th century lines would match perfectly with India's 5ft 11 1/2" "Broad Gauge" and smaller "Metre Gauge" trains. TDI also builds modern tram lines that run on old tracks - Kolkata could do with an upgrade to it's crumbling transportation infrastructure. TDI aren't the only game in town for light transportation, though. There is a much older company that builds everything from fairground trains to modern people movers in the UK too, i.e. Severn Lamb Engineering. Once again, with a British company, India would have the right partner to modernize older suburban train lines in it's cities. I do think it is high time the Integral Coach Factory etc start signing up collaborations / joint ventures with these companies. India's people deserve much better infrastructure than they have available at the moment.