India's first bullet train crosses the halfway mark as Maharashtra's tunnels break through

The Mumbai–Ahmedabad high-speed rail corridor — India's first bullet train — has pushed past the halfway mark, with officials putting overall progress at roughly 55 to 60 percent. The project has completed hundreds of kilometres of viaduct and pier work, and recent breakthroughs on the mountain tunnels in Maharashtra's Palghar district have used specialised tunnel-hood technology to manage air pressure and noise.

The Maharashtra leg has long been the corridor's tougher half, with land acquisition and tunnelling lagging the Gujarat stretch. The Mumbai terminus is an underground station at the Bandra-Kurla Complex, linked toward Thane by a long tunnel that includes an undersea section beneath Thane creek. The BKC station is targeted for completion toward 2029.

Railway officials expect an early section — likely Surat to Vapi in Gujarat — to begin operations around 2027, with the full corridor following later in the decade. The phasing means Maharashtra's travellers will wait longer than Gujarat's for the first trains.

For MMR, the prize is the BKC anchor and the Thane–Palghar alignment, which over time could pull commercial and residential interest toward the stations and their catchments. As with all long-horizon megaprojects, though, the property impact tracks delivery, not headlines — and the Mumbai end remains several years out.