Bangladesh’s Bullet-Train Detour: How an $11 Billion Vision Distracted From Basic Rail Upgrades
Bangladesh once considered spending more than $11 billion on a 224-kilometre high-speed railway between Dhaka and Chattogram. The proposed trains could run at around 300 km/h and reduce the journey to roughly 55–73 minutes, while Bangladesh Railway had already completed feasibility and detailed design work for the project.
The problem was not high-speed rail technology itself. It was sequencing. While Bangladesh considered one of the most expensive transport projects in its history, major conventional corridors were still waiting for dual-gauge conversion, double tracking, modern signalling and basic capacity expansion.
By October 2025, that contrast had become difficult to ignore. Bangladesh was considering a 300 km/h railway before creating a national network where ordinary passenger and freight trains could consistently run at even 100–120 km/h.
China Had Already Offered to Upgrade Three Critical Corridors
China became a major infrastructure partner after President Xi Jinping's 2016 visit to Bangladesh. Among the railway projects subsequently negotiated were three upgrades addressing real capacity and gauge problems in the existing network.
They included:
Joydebpur–Ishwardi: dual-gauge double line
Joydebpur–Mymensingh–Jamalpur: dual-gauge double line
Akhaura–Sylhet: conversion from metre gauge to dual gauge
These were not prestige links. Joydebpur–Ishwardi connects Dhaka with western and northwestern Bangladesh, Akhaura–Sylhet serves the northeast and Joydebpur–Mymensingh carries a major regional passenger flow.
The proposed costs became controversial. Akhaura–Sylhet had an approved cost of about Tk16,104 crore, Joydebpur–Ishwardi was then estimated at Tk14,250 crore and a tentative contract had also been negotiated for Joydebpur–Mymensingh–Jamalpur.
A Prime Minister's Office review sought substantial cost reductions. It ordered a reduction of about Tk3,354 crore for Akhaura–Sylhet and around Tk1,496 crore from the negotiated Joydebpur–Ishwardi contract price, while the Chinese contractors declined to proceed at the reduced prices.
China separately declined to finance Joydebpur–Ishwardi, citing insufficient feasibility work and preliminary studies. Japan eventually entered the project and signed a JPY92.077 billion first-phase loan in June 2025.
The available evidence therefore shows a dispute over cost, feasibility and financing. It does not prove that Beijing deliberately killed the conventional projects to force Bangladesh into high-speed rail.
Then Came the $11 Billion High-Speed Proposal
The dedicated Dhaka–Chattogram high-speed concept eventually developed into a project of exceptional scale. Bangladesh Railway completed feasibility and design work for a new route through Narayanganj, Cumilla and Feni rather than simply modernising the existing railway.
The feasibility work estimated an economic internal rate of return of 15.18%, while its financial internal rate of return was only 4.66%. Economic return can include wider benefits such as time savings and economic activity, whereas financial return asks how effectively the project itself generates money against the investment.
That distinction matters for a project requiring enormous capital. Debt still has to be serviced through fares, commercial revenue, government support or taxation even when wider economic benefits appear positive.
Bangladesh’s Existing Railway Showed What It Actually Needed
The strongest argument against prioritising high-speed rail was already visible on the ground. Bangladesh's most important southeast railway corridor had developed as a patchwork of standards rather than one coherent network.
By 2025, the broad picture looked like this:
Bangladesh completed the Akhaura–Laksam upgrade, making the Dhaka–Chattogram corridor double-track throughout. Yet large sections on either side remained metre gauge, and Bangladesh Railway had already prepared projects to convert Tongi–Akhaura and Laksam–Chattogram.
The contradiction became even clearer south of Chattogram. Bangladesh built the new Dohazari–Cox's Bazar railway as dual gauge while trains approaching it still had to use the older Chattogram–Dohazari metre-gauge section.
ECNEC later approved another Tk10,797.09 crore project to convert Chattogram–Dohazari to dual gauge. One section had therefore been built to a newer standard while the connecting railway immediately north still required another major conversion project.
This is the planning problem in its simplest form. Bangladesh was repeatedly improving individual pieces of railway without first making the country's most important corridors technically consistent from end to end.
What Basic Railway Investment Could Have Delivered
A conventional railway does not need to run at 300 km/h to transform travel. Modern track, double lines, improved signalling, fewer bottlenecks and trains capable of 100–120 km/h could have produced large network-wide benefits.
For the same broad investment envelope, Bangladesh could have prioritised:
dual-gauge double track from Dhaka toward Chattogram;
dual-gauge continuity from Chattogram toward Cox's Bazar;
Joydebpur–Ishwardi double tracking toward Rajshahi, Rangpur and the northwest;
Joydebpur–Mymensingh capacity expansion;
Akhaura–Sylhet gauge conversion;
modern signalling, locomotives and rolling stock;
more passenger trains and container trains;
eventual electrification of the busiest corridors.
The difference is structural. A high-speed railway creates one premium passenger corridor, while conventional modernization improves passenger service, freight movement and connectivity across a much larger national network.
Conventional Rail Could Still Have Made Dhaka–Chattogram Much Faster
Dhaka–Chattogram is roughly 320 kilometres by the existing railway alignment. Intercity trains have historically required around five to six hours because average commercial speeds remain far below the maximum speeds modern conventional trains can achieve.
If a properly upgraded dual-gauge double line allowed an average commercial speed of 80–90 km/h, including stops and slower sections, the journey would theoretically take around 3.6–4 hours. That calculation does not require 300 km/h technology; it requires a conventional railway that can maintain much higher average speeds.
The same logic applies to Cox's Bazar. A continuous modern corridor covering roughly 470 kilometres between Dhaka and Cox's Bazar at an average 80–85 km/h would theoretically require around 5.5–6 hours, before allowing for particularly long station stops or operational delays.
The gain would therefore be smaller than high-speed rail but still substantial. It would also come from infrastructure usable by ordinary passenger trains, freight trains and services continuing toward other regions.
How Much Passenger Time Could Each Approach Actually Save?
Looking only at train speed creates a misleading comparison. A high-speed railway obviously saves much more time for each passenger who uses it, but the real economic benefit also depends on how many passengers can afford and choose that service.
This is particularly important in Bangladesh because premium travel represents only part of the existing passenger market. A 2024 study presented at CUET's International Conference on Advances in Civil Engineering collected passenger data and modelled switching behaviour instead of assuming that every existing traveller would choose a faster train.
The study recorded around:
16,000 daily bus passenger trips between Dhaka and Chattogram in both directions;
about 800 AC-bus and 7,200 non-AC-bus passengers in one direction;
around 1,020 daily air passengers on Dhaka–Chattogram;
existing railway passengers as another potential source of HSR demand.
This passenger mix matters because somebody already buying an airline ticket or premium AC-bus ticket has a very different willingness to pay from somebody deliberately choosing a cheaper non-AC bus or conventional train.
Standardised Time-Saving Comparison
First, assume exactly 10,000 passengers use each alternative every day. This isolates the effect of travel time before affordability and actual ridership are introduced.
The arithmetic uses daily passengers × hours saved × 365. Under equal ridership, high-speed rail clearly wins on Dhaka–Chattogram passenger-hours because that is exactly what a dedicated 300 km/h railway is designed to maximise.
But equal ridership is not a realistic assumption when the alternatives have dramatically different ticket prices.
Real Passengers Do Not All Switch to the Fastest Train
The 2024 CUET study used a more realistic mode-shift model. It assumed that 70% of airline passengers, 80% of AC-bus passengers, 40% of existing rail passengers and only 5% of non-AC-bus passengers would shift to its faster rail concept.
That distribution tells an important story. High-income and premium travellers were assumed to switch at very high rates, while only a small fraction of low-cost bus passengers were expected to move.
The study projected approximately 71.8466 million Dhaka–Chattogram passenger trips over a 35-year project life. Dividing that evenly across 35 years produces an average of about 5,624 passenger trips per day, although actual demand would rise and fall rather than remain perfectly flat.
This study is not the same as the proposed $11 billion dedicated 300 km/h railway. It examined upgrading and electrifying existing infrastructure for faster operation, so its passenger forecast cannot simply be substituted into the government's high-speed feasibility study.
However, it provides something extremely useful: an independent estimate of how travellers on this corridor might actually respond to a faster but more expensive railway instead of assuming 50,000 people automatically appear every day.
Ridership Can Reverse the Apparent Time-Saving Advantage
The difference becomes clear when the headline HSR assumption is compared with more conservative passenger behaviour.
The 50,000-passenger scenario makes the bullet train appear overwhelmingly superior because it combines the largest time saving with extremely high daily ridership. Once daily use falls toward several thousand passengers, the annual time-saving advantage becomes much smaller.
The conventional calculation above also counts only Dhaka–Chattogram passengers. It excludes passengers benefiting from Joydebpur–Ishwardi, Mymensingh, Sylhet, Cox's Bazar and other upgraded corridors.
That is the fundamental difference between the two investment strategies. High-speed rail concentrates a large time saving among passengers using one premium corridor, while conventional modernization spreads smaller individual savings across many routes and can simultaneously increase freight capacity.
The Same Money Could Have Modernised Much More of the Network
Published project estimates from different years show the scale of the opportunity cost. They are not directly comparable procurement quotations, but they provide a useful order-of-magnitude test.
The six conventional estimates total roughly Tk91,866 crore, around Tk1,485 crore below the published high-speed estimate. Because costs were prepared in different years with different scopes, exchange rates and design stages, the comparison should not be read as proof that all six could be completed today for exactly that amount.
The order of magnitude is still important. Bangladesh was considering almost Tk1 lakh crore for one premium passenger corridor while roughly comparable published budgets covered upgrades stretching into the northwest, northeast, southeast and the country's most important port corridor.
A Unified Gauge Would Create a Network Effect
Gauge conversion creates benefits that simple travel-time calculations cannot capture. Once major eastern corridors become dual gauge, compatible rolling stock can move between eastern and western Bangladesh without the network being divided by different track standards.
That could make through-running from Chattogram or Cox's Bazar toward Rajshahi, Khulna, Ishwardi, Parbatipur, Rangpur and Panchagarh much easier. Actual direct services would still depend on demand, rolling stock and timetabling, but incompatible infrastructure would become a much smaller constraint.
Joydebpur–Ishwardi illustrates why this matters. JICA's 2025 financing specifically supports conversion into a dual-gauge double line to increase railway capacity and improve domestic and regional connectivity.
The investment therefore improves more than one train journey. It increases the usefulness of other railway assets connected to the same network.
Freight Makes the Conventional Case Stronger
High-speed rail mainly solves passenger travel time. A dedicated passenger HSR line would not solve the ordinary container and freight capacity problems affecting movement from Chattogram Port to the rest of Bangladesh.
A conventional dual-gauge double line has a broader role. Passenger trains, intercity services, freight trains and container trains can all benefit from higher capacity, better signalling and fewer conflicts between trains.
This becomes more important as Chattogram Port expands and Matarbari develops. Bangladesh needs a railway capable of shifting more freight away from highways as well as moving passengers faster.
The return from conventional modernization therefore appears in more places than ticket revenue. It can include additional passenger capacity, freight revenue, lower logistics pressure on highways and better use of investments already made elsewhere on the network.
Could Tk3,000–4,000 Tickets Ever Recover the Investment?
Fare is where the dedicated high-speed proposal becomes financially difficult. The basic mathematics looks attractive only when very high passenger numbers are assumed.
Using the published Tk93,351 crore capital cost, simple annual fare revenue can be estimated as daily passengers × average fare × 365. Dividing the project cost by that annual revenue produces a crude gross payback period before any operating or financing costs.
Those numbers are intentionally optimistic. They treat every taka of ticket revenue as if it were available to repay construction cost, while a real high-speed railway would also need electricity, staff, station operations, security, signalling, train maintenance, track maintenance, administration and rolling-stock replacement.
Interest is also missing. A multibillion-dollar project funded through sovereign or state-backed borrowing would carry financing costs for decades.
If, purely as a sensitivity test, 40% of fare revenue went toward operations and maintenance, a 50,000-passenger system charging Tk3,000 would need around 28 years for simple capital recovery before financing costs. At Tk4,000, the equivalent period would still be around 21 years.
These calculations help explain why a project can show meaningful wider economic benefits while still having a much weaker financial case.
Higher Fares Create an Even Bigger Demand Problem
The biggest weakness in the revenue case is not simply the ticket price. It is the assumption that enough passengers would actually pay that price every day.
A 50,000-passenger calculation is useful for demonstrating what happens at high utilisation, but it should not be mistaken for guaranteed demand. Existing passenger behaviour suggests that Bangladesh would have needed to attract an unusually large number of people into a premium rail product.
The 2024 CUET study is useful again because it explicitly modelled switching behaviour. Instead of assuming every traveller would use faster rail, it assumed 70% of air passengers, 80% of AC-bus passengers, 40% of rail passengers and only 5% of non-AC-bus passengers would switch.
That study estimated about 71.85 million Dhaka–Chattogram trips over 35 years, equivalent to an average of roughly 5,624 trips per day if evenly distributed. Its break-even Dhaka–Chattogram ticket was approximately Tk1,485, considerably below the Tk3,000–4,000 sensitivity range being tested here.
Again, the CUET study examined a different technical concept based on improving existing tracks, so its ridership cannot be treated as the official forecast for the proposed dedicated HSR line. But it is a valuable reality check on how price-sensitive the actual transport market may be.
What If Daily Demand Was Closer to 5,600 Than 50,000?
Even if 5,624 passengers per day continued travelling after fares increased to Tk3,000–4,000, the capital-recovery mathematics changes dramatically.
These are still gross-revenue calculations. At 5,624 daily passengers and a Tk3,000 ticket, assuming 40% of revenue went toward operations and maintenance would extend simple capital recovery to roughly 253 years before interest and major renewals.
At Tk4,000, the same simplified assumption gives roughly 190 years. These numbers are not forecasts of how long Bangladesh would literally operate the railway to recover its money; they demonstrate how quickly the financial logic collapses when utilisation falls far below the headline assumption.
Increasing the Fare Could Reduce Ridership Further
There is another problem. The 5,624-passenger average comes from a study whose estimated Dhaka–Chattogram HSR fare was about Tk1,485, while this sensitivity test assumes Tk3,000–4,000.
It would therefore be unsafe to assume that the same 5,624 passengers would still travel after the fare doubled or more. Higher fares increase revenue from every passenger who remains, but they can simultaneously shrink the pool of people willing or able to buy the ticket.
That tension can be written simply:
Higher fare → more revenue per ticket → lower affordability → potentially fewer passengers
The structure of the current market makes the problem particularly important. The 2024 field data found far more non-AC bus travellers than premium AC-bus travellers on Dhaka–Chattogram, and the study assumed only 5% of those lower-cost passengers would switch.
Someone already buying an airline ticket may happily pay Tk3,000 for a one-hour train. An AC-bus passenger may also value the time saving enough to pay substantially more.
But passengers choosing cheap buses or conventional trains are revealing a different preference. Saving several hours may not be worth paying several times their existing fare.
The 50,000-passenger case should therefore be read as a high-utilisation revenue scenario, not as something Bangladesh could safely assume would happen from the start. Once realistic affordability and mode choice are introduced, the financial risk becomes one of the strongest arguments for modernising conventional rail first.
Bangladesh Also Shelved an Expressway While Pursuing High-Speed Rail
The opportunity cost was not limited to railway projects. The government had spent around Tk100 crore on feasibility and detailed design for a Dhaka–Chattogram expressway before formally abandoning the project in 2021.
At the time, the Roads and Highways Department's chief engineer told The Daily Star that the prime minister favoured high-speed rail on the corridor instead. The proposed HSR itself then failed to move into construction, leaving the country without either of the two large corridor projects.
This sequence does not prove that every highway or railway alternative should have been built. It does show the cost of allowing one very expensive concept to reshape investment priorities before its own financial viability and funding were secure.
The Dhaka–Cumilla Chord Line Needs the Same Thing
Bangladesh Railway has also studied a new Dhaka–Cumilla alignment that could shorten the rail distance to Chattogram. Such a conventional chord has a different economic logic from dedicated high-speed rail because ordinary passenger services could use the shorter alignment.
That does not automatically make the project good value. Bangladesh should compare its cost against completing dual-gauge conversion, signalling, electrification and capacity improvements on the railway it already owns.
The previous experience shows why that comparison should happen before another mega-project becomes the centre of transport planning. Bangladesh needs to know how much time and capacity each taka of investment actually buys across the whole network.
The Real Failure Was the Order of Investment
High-speed rail may eventually make sense for Bangladesh. A wealthier country with a mature conventional railway, strong premium-passenger demand and reliable feeder connections can justify paying billions to reduce a four-hour railway journey toward one hour.
That was not the choice Bangladesh actually faced. It was comparing a premium passenger railway with a national network still divided by gauges, constrained by single lines and unable to provide enough passenger or freight capacity on several important corridors.
The capital comparison makes the opportunity cost especially difficult to ignore. Roughly the same published investment envelope as the Dhaka–Chattogram high-speed railway covered six major conventional railway upgrades on paper, even though those estimates came from different years and would change before implementation.
Those projects could improve connectivity toward Chattogram, Cox's Bazar, Sylhet, Mymensingh, Rajshahi, Rangpur, Khulna, Parbatipur and Panchagarh. They could also create more paths for freight and increase the usefulness of every future railway investment connected to them.
The passenger comparison points in the same direction. A bullet train offers the greatest possible time saving to each traveller who can afford and chooses to use it, but that benefit shrinks sharply when realistic ridership is introduced.
Conventional modernization offers a smaller time saving per passenger. Yet it can serve a much wider passenger market, carry freight, connect multiple regions and remain useful even to travellers who cannot afford a Tk3,000–4,000 premium ticket.
That is the central investment mistake. Bangladesh was considering the fastest possible railway before building the railway system that could have produced the broadest return.
References
Bangladesh Railway
Japan International Cooperation Agency (JICA)
Asian Development Bank (ADB)
Bangladesh Sangbad Sangstha (BSS)
The Daily Star
The Business Standard
New Age
7th International Conference on Advances in Civil Engineering (ICACE 2024), CUET
Safkat Ar Rumman and Mahmood Omar Imam, Feasibility Analysis of the High-Speed Rail in the Dhaka–Chattogram–Cox's Bazar Route
2 Comments
Experience the world's luckyclub biggest slot machine with 20 paylines of Wild, Sweet Bonanza, and more. Play live casino games at Lucky Club.