New Delhi, June 24 (TIWN) In a bid to reduce travel time, the Indian Railways, under its 100-day action plan, envisages increasing the speeds of trains on the Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah routes at an investment of over Rs 13,500 crore, officials said.

 A senior railway ministry official told IANS: "In a proposal approved by Railway Minister Piyush Goyal, the Railways plans to increase the train speed to 160 kmh on the busy routes of Delhi-Mumbai and Delhi-Howrah in the next four years."  By increasing the speeds on these busiest rail routes, the travel time between Delhi-Howrah and Delhi-Mumbai will be reduced to 12 hours and 10 hours, respectively, as compared to the current 17 hours and 15.5 hours, the official said.  Currently the maximum speed on these routes, which account for 30 per cent of passenger and 20 per cent of freight traffic, is 130 kmh.  The official said the proposal envisages that in the next 100 days, approval should be obtained for this project and the proposal is being sent to the Cabinet Committee for Economic Affairs (CCEA).