I took a short ride b/w LKO and Unnao on this train. And it took 30+ minutes for us to negotiate b/w Lucknow and Manak Nagar only. Even after that, the train ran at a snail's pace with multiple TSRs and didn't took speed until half the distance was over. We had covered 25 km in over an hour. It took us ~1.5 + hrs to reach Unnao Jn. Lucknow and Kanpur is being connected by an expressway, meanwhile trains are crawling in that section. To say there is an mps of this section is a misnomer because the maximum speed won't be achieved for half the duration.

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were some stations being renovated en route[which is a good thing]. I returned via CNB-LKO MEMU which was overtaken by PNVL-GKP Express once[ at Ajgain, I think] and then again at Amausi. Large parts of this was due to freight prioritization, increased stoppage at wayside stations[our train stopped for 10 mins for no reason at one station and 10 mins is the difference that decides whether your train will be overtaken later or not].

I don't see anyway how Vande Metro will come on these tracks. The tracks are absolutely borderline pathetic in this section. They were probably in better shape when they were first built.It's much better to shell out money for bus services b/w CNB-LJN than take a train. Check the JHS-LKO passenger. It takes 4 hrs to complete this section sometimes. Even the daily EMUs take 3 hrs regularly. From 1.5 hrs to 3 hrs, IR has made a disgrace out of this section.

I contrasted this section with LKO-RBL one where our LKO-BSBS ICE took 30 mins to route out of LKO-UTR section because why not but after that, it near constantly did 100+ with only one unscheduled stop and reached RBL 5 mins before covering ~77 km in 1 hr 15 mins. Meanwhile, even the fastest trains like VB/Shatabdi take this amount of time to cover LJN-CNB stretch which is technically 5 kms smaller.