Bihar Waited 67 Years for This Bridge

Numbers That Surprised Me · EP 02

1 → 3. That's the number of rail lines that now cross the Ganga at Mokama. For 67 years it was one.

The bridge that couldn't be doubled

The Rajendra Setu near Mokama opened in 1959. It carries a single railway line, and because of technical limits it can never be doubled³. Every train between north and south Bihar on this corridor had to share that one track.

So trains crawled. Speed limits on the old bridge were 40–50 km/h¹, one train at a time, on a corridor that feeds the Howrah–Delhi main line².

5 October 2026: that changed

After a two-day inspection on 3 and 4 October, the Commissioner of Railway Safety cleared the new bridge, and it opened on 5 October¹.

It has two new tracks on a bridge built about 50 metres from the old one, on the Patna side⁴.
The main bridge is about 1.9 km long, and the full project runs about 15.5 km including the approach lines between Mokama and Barauni⁴.
The first train across was the Mahananda Express, at about 90 km/h. That is roughly double the old bridge's limit¹.
The bridge is designed for 140 km/h¹.

One plus two equals three

The Rajendra Setu isn't being retired. It keeps carrying trains, so this section now has three rail lines across the Ganga². That doubles the rail capacity linking north and south Bihar¹.

The price of connecting it

Joining a new bridge to a busy main line takes time. To complete the connection work, Indian Railways cancelled, diverted or short-terminated 845 train services between 21 September and 4 October 2026, a 14-day block³.

Why the timing matters

The bridge opened just before Diwali and Chhath, when rail traffic to Bihar rises sharply². This year, everyone heading home has two more tracks over the Ganga.

The number that surprised me

It wasn't the speed. It was 67 years on one track. The bridge was sanctioned in the 2015-16 Rail Budget, and work began in March 2016¹. Today, three lines cross the river at Mokama.

A note on cost: reported figures differ. One report says about ₹2,400 crore for the whole project^{1, 4}, while the sanctioned estimate for the bridge was ₹1,491.47 crore³. I've left the cost out of the video for that reason.

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