A Golden Goose and Two White Elephants

Over the last few months, the newly elected State Government has pursued a policy of abject neglect of vital projects like the $ 2 Billion Vizhinjam deep water port, while focusing on sure-fire financial disasters such as the proposed mass transit system in Ernakulam and a catastrophically expensive bullet train line.

A Happy New Year everyone and hopefully 2012 will not be as much drought-prone in terms of articles as 2011 was, since I have finally completed my work at MIT. I know that the traditional year-end wrap up and the look-ahead articles are still woefully pending but those should be posted in the next few days, hopefully!

Although I am in the midst of wrapping things up here at MIT and moving to a new apartment in Cambridge, there is this one issue that I felt couldn't wait much longer.

Scanning through the Kerala media of late, one would be forgiven for thinking that the State's single large infrastructure project has vanished off the face of the planet. It finds no mention in the news of recent weeks, which have tended to be dominated in equal measure by old men demanding monopoly rights to play with their toy trains and even older dams that threatened to unleash disaster but very evidently didn't. It has been fully six months since the financial bids for the $ 2 Billion Vizhinjam deep water port were received. Since then, the bids submitted by Indian port giant, Adani Ports, and the consortium of Indian conglomerate Welspun and Australian construction giant, Leighton, have been gathering dust, probably in some back drawer at the office of the nodal agency, VISL. Why? Because, everyone has been sitting around, sipping chai and munching biskoots, till due clearances were received from the Union Ministries of External Affairs, Defence and Home. The Defence Ministry's clearance was received on November 15th while the Ministry of External Affairs gave its nod to Leighton on December 8.Ever since the start, it was evident to everyone, except the powers-that-be in the Secretariat, that Mundra would flunk the Home Ministry for whatever reason, because they have flunked every single time they were examined in the last year or so, on no less than four separate occasions. Despite this, the State Government chose not to pressure the Home Ministry to speed things up, perhaps nervous about the inevitable outcome, and waited till January 3, when the latter let the axe finally drop on Adani, leaving the Welspun-Leighton consortium as the lone bidder for the project. Despite clear precedents existing for single bids being successfully awarded in ports and other major infrastructure projects and the requisite mechanism being included in the bid documents, the Government has refused to take a decision on awarding the bid even though three weeks have elapsed since things were made very easy for them. Although it was announced that a decision would be made in the Cabinet meeting on the 11th of January, nothing transpired - except more chai and biskoots!

And so, the current Government's sordid attitude towards the one project that could change the future economic trajectory of the State continues. When the Government recently, convened a much-trumpeted seminar to discuss infrastructure, it named four "priority projects". Shockingly, Vizhinjam didn't make that list. Surprise, surprise! It seems that land acquisition for the project has also ground to a halt since the change of Government while no progress has been made in tying up the funding needed for developing the infrastructure in the current "landlord" model of development. Whereas, the State has been very willing to take its begging bowl to international funding agencies like the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the ADB or the World Bank for other projects, it has instead opted to take its most important infrastructure project to the commercial banks which is a much more expensive and risky proposition. Admittedly, this was first proposed by the previous Government, but then they are historically wary of international development finance institutions. And despite making a lot of noise about awarding the construction tender in March (yes, really, less than two months from now!), it is not even clear whether the project consultant for the construction aspect of the port, AECOM, has visited the site yet. All in all, one suspects that precious little has happened while the powers-that-be have focused their attention on the more "important" projects (I wonder whether India's deepest port even makes the Top 10?!). And to add insult to injury, the Ports Minister has been desperately trying to divert a proposed ship repair and building yard that Cochin Shipyard Limited wants to locate at Vizhinjam because of its deep draft, proximity to shipping lanes and the port itself, to Azhikkal which has none of these attributes. Fortunately, opposition from quarters ranging from the local Panchayat to MP Dr Shashi Tharoor, together with the the project proponent's inevitable realization that only Vizhinjam or its immediate neighbor Poovar would be suitable seem to have thrown a permanent spanner in this machination (or so we hope! A report on the final location of the yard which was supposed to have been released by November 30 has not seen the light of day yet.). In short, from the prevailing attitude and interest, Vizhinjam may be mistaken for a project in a neighboring State, if not across the border in Pakistan! Seems like this is one golden goose that nobody can see for what it can offer....sigh!

Now, we can't say that our elected Government has been all silent on the question of infrastructure. No, they have been very vocal and busy indeed, the only detail seems to be that they have a curious propensity to focus on pachyderms of the white variety. 

Indeed the current Government has been going to extremely legally tenuous links to keep one of them on its feet, barely. In a State where even the smallest PWD tender's legality and transparency is questioned, the State Government has just broken all conventions and regulations to award a Rs 300 Crore assignment without even the pretense of a bid. Cabinet Ministers and even Chief Ministers have been hauled to court and even to jail for far smaller contracts, but apparently this is okay because otherwise the apparent 'god of mass transit' would walk off the project because he believe that his pet DMRC shouldn't be put through the minor "indignity" of a global bid. Mr Sreedharan (the afore-mentioned divine entity) and his minions believe that even the Rs 300 Crores or 6% of the currently tossed up project cost of Rs 5000 Crores is a "discounted price" as opposed to the usual 12.5% that they apparently rob from everyone else! That sort of consultancy fees would blow the socks off even the priciest global consultants, the likes of Bechtel or PB whose fees for the greatest urban engineering project of all time - Boston's $ 22 Billion (Rs 110,000 Crores) Big Dig - was between 7-11%. The Big Dig was in a very expensive market, whereas DMRC's costs, bench marked to Indian labor costs, which form the bulk of the project management consultant's costs, would be much lower. Personally, I have only heard of figures well south of 5% for these services, especially for large infrastructure projects. Whatever be the case, it is ludicrous to imagine that a contract of this size can be awarded without a bid. To put this in perspective this amount is more than the original tender for the entire Trivandrum Road Improvement Project! It's not as if there are no other agencies executing mass transit projects in India. The Hyderabad and Mumbai mass transit projects are doing very well without DMRC, and there is no reason why any one of dozens of the major consultants around the world could not offer a better price than the DMRC. 

Even the over eagerness of the DMRC and, its newly retired ex-boss and the most recent addition to the Indian pantheon, should raise an eyebrow or two. When the prime proponent himself has gone on record to say that heavy rail mass transit systems are not suitable for cities with populations less than 4 Million people, it is mystifying why the same concept is flogged for a city with less than half that number. The small print is that the project in Ernakulam would utilize light rail technology, which is essentially an elevated tram and bears little resemblance to its bigger cousin in Delhi. It will have just 2-3 small cars per train and have a fraction of the carrying capacity of the systems in Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai or Mumbai. Furthermore, other than a few extensions proposed in the future, there is still no comprehensive plan for a network. A single line mass transit network is a recipe for failure, as has been made painfully evident in many cases across the world, including our very own Kolkata Metro, of which Sreedharan was part of decades ago. 

 What everyone's expecting.....Heavy rail "Metro"

(Courtesy: Asiabizz.com)

 The reality - Elevated Light Rail!!

(Light rail in Charlotte, NC; courtesy: Oldtrails.com)

Essentially a gigantic hoodwink is in progress here, which the proponents have realized cannot be funded through a partnership with a private investor because its is clearly financially infeasible and hence is being funded by a combination of State and Central funds and a massive loan from JICA. And one wonders where all this money is going to come from. The mass transit project essentially benefits only the city where it is located, as opposed to a project like Vizhinjam which benefits the entire State's economy and that of the nation itself.Will the State contribution and the money needed to pay back the JICA loan be collected through local taxes, as it should be, or funded from the State treasury, from everyone's taxes, as it is most likely to be? A decision of this nature cannot and should not be left to the demands of one individual, however revered he be. What happens if this individual changes his mind tomorrow or becomes unable to participate in the project for any reason, will we leave the project unfinished??! No, a project of this scale has to be dependent on capable agencies and robust management structures, not on individuals! And the DMRC has itself been in trouble with the top Government auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India's office, which has accused it of lax safety procedures and of being a fiefdom of its own (Sreedharan who abruptly left office at the odd age of 79, denies these allegations and says that "only results matter" while the Government conveniently refused to table the report in Parliament). Sadly, both the Government and the Opposition, not to mention the media and the general public, seem to be in thrall to an individual. If one were so inclined, one could suspect this gentleman is most interested in a cushy retirement posting close to his ancestral home but then he is a most honorable man!

And as if one white elephant riding the rails and wasting the tax-payers' money wasn't enough for Kerala, the Government has just started planning for another one, which seems more a white whale than a mere pachyderm! While the price tag for the light-rail-dressed-up-as-a-Metro was about Rs 6,000 Crores, the estimates for the proposed "High Speed Rail Corridor" is expected to be north of Rs 1,00,000 Crores! Having written in detail on how ludicrous and potentially fiscally disastrous this project would be, a couple of months ago, I am not going into the subject in detail but there are a few questions that neither the starry-eyed Government nor its 'usual suspect' consultants, DMRC and INKEL, seem to be interested in even pondering, let alone answering. 

Firstly, where is the market study to substantiate a project that will cost more than 8 times the annual Plan for the whole State? Bullet trains compete in speed and for passengers with airlines. In 2011, despite the massive expansion in airline and airline capacity capacity, the total number of airline passengers in India was equivalent to just about 5% of the nation's population. Since many people fly multiple times, the actual number of people who use airlines and hence would pay a premium for speed would be much lower. So are we suggesting that an investment that would essentially bankrupt the State be spent on a project that would benefit less than 5% of the population? Not to parody Obama and his 1% Vs 99% war cry, but in a country that still struggles with poverty, unemployment and even access to electricity and drinking water, there are surely better uses of any available funds. Next, other than providing high speed travel for a small section of people to and from a small number of stations, perhaps ten in all between Trivandrum and Kasargode, the bullet train provides no economic benefit because it cannot carry freight and hence cannot reduce the burden on Kerala's highways that are literally bursting with traffic and which will just get more congested when the 4.5 Million TEU Vizhinjam Container Transshipment Terminal comes on line. Even if high speed rail travel is a desirable end, there are ways and means of achieving speeds of up to 200-250 Km/hr even on conventional rails that are not only cheaper but can also carry freight. Finally, whoever decided that Kerala needs High Speed Rail? Was a complete transportation study of the State ever conducted to identify current and future demand patterns and the best technological solutions to meet them? No, of course not. When we have our resident spin doctors, the DMRC, advising bullet trains (we should be thankfully that they haven't pulled mag-lev out of their hats just yet!) as the magic bullet (pun intended!) to solve all of Kerala's transportation woes, no one will question it. Of course, sir yes sir!

At this rate, we will have the same agency suggesting how to build the replacement for that aging dam north of Idukki and even how to save Malayalam cinema from a rampaging Santosh Pandit! And our well-meaning leaders will legislate a path clear for them. It's high time that we see through the smoke-and-mirrors act and understand which projects are realistic and will bring benefits to the State and which ones are very expensive pipe dreams. 

In the past few months, there has been a clear preference for the fanciful instead of the feasible and we have heard all sorts of ideas such as flying pod-cars, which should have gone to the trash bin not the State Cabinet. There has also been a distressing tendency for projects associated with Trivandrum like Vizhinjam, Technocity, the monorail (which, as opposed to its cousin in Ernakulam seems to have vanished into feasibility study oblivion), the International Convention Center and the Life Sciences Park to find scant mention in the Government's list of priorities, if any mention at all. Despite the fact that the Transport Minister was elected from the city, Trivandrum is still short of 10 Volvo buses which were paid for with JNNURM funds. Except for a few voices like Dr Tharoor, there's hardly a mention of Trivandrum even when a battle rages over mundane things as garbage disposal. When this Government got elected in May, I had a faint hope that things would be different this time around and that the State Capital and its projects would get fair attention. Alas, how wrong I was!! If Piravam doesn't vote as it should, we may be in for four more years of the same!

The Lack of a Vision a.k.a How Things are Done in Kerala

While the need to have a Vision is often emphasized for successful organizations, the same holds even more for public policy making. Coherent visions are often absent in mission-critical projects in Kerala and this leads to short-sighted plans which often leave much to be desired.

On the occasion of having completed 11,315 days of existence, I took a few minutes off to try and figure out what was my vision for the rest of my life. Since it was still a bit grandiose, my thoughts shifted to why that most essential of all components of a strategic plan for a State or a City was patently absent from how the lives of the citizens of Trivandrum were being planned out by their elected Government and the legions of public servants. Rather than meander through a whole forest of sorry examples of vision-devoid planning and execution, let me just focus on three immediate ones to drive home my point to you, the recipients of this sort of unimaginative thinking.

The first example is everyone's favorite infrastructure project, the deep water port and container transshipment terminal proposed at Vizhinjam in the southern part of the city. After reading through in detail, the plethora of reports produced for the project, I couldn't help but come to the saddening conclusion that the highly-paid consultants of the project had failed to realize the true potential of what could be India's most important hub port. Here again, there is a plain lack of vision, which should have been set by the Government or its nodal agency, VISL. Of course, the consultants, led by IFC, were being paid to help come with this as well but their attempts to evolve a vision and a mission, neither are ambitious enough nor are they connected to market realities. In short, Vizhinjam has been sold very short as yet another container port which has to compete with Colombo, Dubai and even the likes of Ernakulam, on mere cost terms. A good vision would have enabled the studies to reflect the fact that with its advantages of proximity to the world's busiest shipping lane, its natural draft and the lack of a need for any major maintenance dredging, not does Vizhinjam have an inherent cost and market advantage, but it could develop into a hub port for the entire Indian Ocean region which has great strategic and economic importance (for example, the fact that the bulk of the world's crude oil and coal sources lie along its rim!). The report played down the potential for ancillary activities such as ship-building (fortunately, CSL doesn't seem to have paid much attention to the report!) and the establishment of a power plant based on imported coal (Kerala can only produce about 40% of even its current power requirement!) No, a real vision would have seen Vizhinjam's true potential to be an economic engine to transform the entire State's economy by introducing for the first time in its history, global logistics connectivity at the best rates possible in India and the promise of abundant power that is a key requirement for economic development. With few, if  any, natural resources, Kerala and Trivandrum can only follow the Singapore model which depends on great logistics, abundant and high quality human resources and power availability to foster economic development to propel it far beyond what the rest of India can achieve at the current pace.

For this to happen, the Government needs to accept that Vizhinjam is the one Top Priority for it and not joint-third most important project or whatever. From the evident lack of pressure that the State has been putting on the Center to complete the small matter of the security clearance of the final two bidders, one would even suspect if the UDF wishes that if they wait long enough, these bidders would also go away?! If one also factors in the Cabinet's googly in asking CSL to consider Azhikkal rather than Vizhinjam/Poovar as a location for their Rs 1500 Crore expansion, it would seem that their "vision" is see Vizhinjam eke out a living as a fishing hamlet for all of perpetuity! In a better world, one would hope that the Government would complete land acquisition and infrastructure development through budgetary support (rather than wait for debt to be raised, which can happen only after the bid is finalized and the environmental clearance has been realized, by August 2012 at the earliest!), create a land bank in Trivandrum district for industrial development related to the port and start to put in place the transportation infrastructure necessary for extending the hinterland of the project out across Kerala and into Southern Tamilnadu (rather than only two districts of Kerala as the current project report would have us believe!).

If only the Government had gone in to conceptualize an economic development plan (a Vision!) for the State, which could have then translated down to specific initiatives such as those described above. That would have been cheaper and far more impactful than all those fanciful conference and "investor meets" that the State's industrial promotion agencies host each year.

Our next example, is far closer to home. A few days ago, the media reported that a "Master Plan 2031" for Trivandrum was in the making. In fact, The Hindu reported that:

The first draft of a master plan for Thiruvananthapuram is expected to be submitted to the government by December 31.

The new Thiruvananthapuram master plan 2031 will be a document outlining the city's development agenda for the next 20 years, focusing on the land use pattern, traffic and transportation, infrastructure, solid waste management and sanitation, which will be revised every five years.

A one-day workshop was convened here by the Corporation and the Town and Country Planning Department on Saturday to discuss the preparation of the plan.Officials of various departments; Corporation councillors; chairpersons of standing committees; Corporation officials as well as members of the 19 working groups constituted for giving regional inputs on development issues, trends, area-specific development plans and projects for proposed master plan, took part in the workshop.

It sounds like this was another "babu-only" party and doesn't sound like it had avenues for participation by NGOs or individuals who could add a lot of value. I recall that when this whole exercise had been kicked off in 2009, it has been a multi-lateral effort involving the Government, the Trivandrum Corporation, surrounding municipalities and panchayats, NGOs and individuals and I had been lucky enough to participate and present at the brain-storming session. Today, it seems to have been whittled down to a closed-door study which is unlikely to spend much time and effort on such concepts as a Vision. The exercise had begun by looking at the metropolitan agglomeration of Trivandrum, referred to as the Trivandrum Capital Region, but from the way the Corporation is running the show now, it seems that the scope has shrunk back down to just the Corporation which is highly counter-productive considering that the Corporation has expanded multiple times in the last couple of decades and that projects of manifest importance such as Technocity and the IISER & IISST lie just outside its limits. It is safe to assume that by 2021, forget 2031, the Corporation would have expanded to encompass these areas and more. Therefore, the Master Plan for 2031 should look at the entire urban agglomeration and then some, extending from Varkala to Neyyatinkara, and to Nedumangad/Vithura in the East.

A real urban area master plan needs to start with a forward-looking Vision statement which then distills down to specific initiatives in land use planning, density, urban structure, transportation, economic and social development and utility planning. For example, it could start with, "in 2031, Trivandrum will be a metropolis of 4 Million people which provides a world-class, economically vibrant, cosmopolitan, equitable and sustainable lifestyle to its citizens." It should be forward looking and should plan for the Trivandrum of 25 years in the future not the city of today or 5 years from now. In this way, unlike past attempts at a master plan which were already out of date by the time they were promulgated, the 2031 master plan at least will have a chance to be relevant at least till 2021!

Finally, we come to the recent spate of "transportation" proposals in and around Trivandrum, which include a monorail system for the city, a bullet train linking Trivandrum to Chennai and now, lo and behold, a  "pod-car" or Personal Transportation system! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, some hare-brain wants to bring Tom Cruise's car from the Minority Report and use it as a substitute for the monorail. No matter that PRT solutions are used for localized transportation needs such as within airports or within highly dense Central Business Districts, or that they do not have anything near the capacity demanded by a viable mass transit system. Let's ignore these flights of fancy for now, the main concern is that while the Government talks about all those thousands of Crores of investment, there is no coherent plan in place, let alone a vision!

Consider the monorail, it cropped all of a sudden, perhaps based on comments made by experts like Dr N Sreenivasan. But the Government took a pretty unilateral call on not just the alignment of the system but also the technology to be deployed. It mandated NATPAC (the one saving grace thus far, NATPAC is a competent choice as opposed to certain agencies whose standard reply to any question, even "what's the day today?", is "Metro Rail"!!) to submit a preliminary report on the Balaramapuram - Attingal route. This is sort of like a patient coming, complaining of a stomach ache, and the doctor immediately prepping him for surgery without bothering to find out if his ailment is just a bad lunch! 

If the issue in question was traffic congestion, the solution should have started with an analysis of the traffic situation in Trivandrum and its likely evolution over the next 15-20 years. This in turn depends on a variety of factors such as the urban plan (which is still on the drawing board!), demographics, socioeconomic development and physical environment. The outcome of this study would be an identification of where, what and when transportation solutions are needed. Is monorail the only choice? Could a cheaper system like BRTS work or do we need to plan for a higher-capacity system like heavy-rail MRTS? Instead of restricting NATPAC to a narrow scope (monorail on a particular corridor), the study should have been much more comprehensive. A study of this nature in 2002, although confined to the then limits of the Corporation, led to the conceptualiztion of TCRIP. In the ten years which have passed since then, it has already become insufficient as evidenced by the congestion experienced on the newly widened roads! 

Urban planning and transportation planning are a classic chicken and egg combination. One feeds off the other, yet can influence it as well. For example, a new monorail line is usually planned depending on the current and projected urban structure (to connect major hubs and dense residential catchments) but this line can also influence how the city develops because new developments tend to cluster around the mass transit line. The current "one route" mass transit system is utter folly, as evidenced by so many examples in India and across the world, where single lines have failed because of their inability to provide door step to door step connectivity. Only a multi-route network with subsidiary bus services integrated into it can provide a economical, viable alternative to the personal automobile and thus achieve success. As the first step to this, the Government needs to have a vision for the metropolitan area which needs to be translated into an effective urban transportation system.

Sometimes, the big picture is lost when one focuses on short term gratification. The question is whether this Government would like to be known as one which dreamed up a gazillion Crores worth of fanciful, never-to-be-implemented projects or one which actually executed fewer but impactful projects such as Vizhinjam and a true mass transit system which improved the lives of citizens for generations to come.

Is there a Vision in the room yet?

 

A Solution for High Speed on Rails?

Since the previous article on the High Speed Rail proposal, I have received a lot of feedback from many of you, through comments here, on SSC and on the Trivandrum Updates blog, which is the best one-stop shop for news about Trivandrum!

Let me thank everyone who chipped in and all those who didn't but still took the time to read my thoughts. While many of you supported the idea, there were a lot of folks who saw the current proposal for the bloated white whale (Moby Dick, please excuse again! that it is.

After a bit of further thought on the subject and a few discussions with like-minded friends of mine, here's a short proposal for the powers-that-be.

1.  Without jumping straight to the HSR option, it would do the Government well to appoint a consultant to study all options for implementing "high speed and cost-efficient travel" along the North-South axis in Kerala. This could be HSR, mixed-use rail, an Expressway or even jet-skis on our canals! The message is simple - DO NOT discount any option without studying it properly
2. If Rail is selected as the best option, adopt a phased approach rather than move directly to the ludicrously expensive HSR
3. Acquire a 30 m wide RoW either along the existing rail alignment from Trivandrum to Kasargode or along a new greenfield alignment (say, Trivandrum - Kottarakara - Punalur - Muvattupuzha - Kanjikode - Mallapuram - Kannur - Kasargode, with spurs to Ernakulam and Kozhikode) where the land acquisition will be the least expensive.
4. Construct two electrified broad-guage lines with an operating speed of at least 200 Km/Hr
5. Operate Acela-like high speed train-sets at up to 250 Km/Hr 
6. Also operate high-speed freight trains to between Trivandrum and Ernakulam, Coimbatore, Chennai and Bangalore with containers and perishable goods being the predominant cargo
7. All existing semi-high speed trains, such as the Rajdhani, Duronto and Jan Shatabdi can be run on the new tracks as well
8. In the future, say 10 years hence, if a market emerges for true HSR, two tracks, either at grade or elevated, can be constructed along the same RoW since no new land acquisition will be needed

It looks like the HSR wave in India is more a knee-jerk reaction to China's splurge on the technology rather than on economic fundamentals. I would guess that the feasibility study will point to only a few viable routes, if any, such as Mumbai - Ahmedabad, Delhi - Agra (?) and Chennai - Bangalore. These would work if the Union Government is ready to invest dozens of Billions of dollars into it. At this time, I would doubt that. For a comparison, the total cost of the National Highway Development Program may be of the order of Rs 150,000 Crores ($ 32 Billion) over the last decade or more, whereas implementing all six HSR corridors proposed now would cost at least $ 200 Billion! If the projects go out on the BOT route, it seems unlikely that there will be any takers without massive subsidies (essentially all the capital expenditure!) and if at all, only for the few routes identified above, not for less attractive ones like the stretch in Kerala.

On the other hand, the phased, hybrid rail development that I have outline above could be set in motion at much lower cost and almost immediately. The principal initial expenditure would be land acquisition. The RoW would need about (600 Km X 25 m = 15 Sq. Km = 3750 acres). If the alignment is chosen to run through sparsely populated interior areas with low land valuations, the average cost could be kept down to about Rs 1 Crore/Acre. This means that all the land could be acquired for about Rs 4000 Crores, or if it is done in two phases, Phase I (Trivandrum - Ernakulam) would cost about 1500 Crores. As mentioned in the previous article, the rail system itself would cost about Rs 5000 Crores.

Since this is not a pure HSR project, the Indian Railways could be roped in. IR does not have the funds, so the State would have to chip with most of the cash, probably through a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), which raises debt or issues bonds. Additionally, because of the freight traffic involved, agencies like ConCor and the operator of the Vizhinjam deep-water port could be roped in as equity partners. We could even try to bring in a private operator for the new rail system, who would maintain and operate the system in exchange for fees charged to the operators such as IR, Concor etc.

This would be a complex, hybrid deal with multiple stake-holders but it would probably be able to raise the funds needed in a practical period of time because it can tap more than one source. Rather than leaving the implementation to IR (whose record in Kerala is pathetic) or to a new Central Government entity (for which Kerala would be the lowest priority), this option takes the development of the system into the hands of the stake-holders who are most interested in it - the people of Kerala and key business entities like the Vizhinjam port.

Sound very logical, doesn't it. But to move to a pragmatic solution like this, the State Government needs to take a step back from its current fixation on HSR as the ONLY solution and snap out of the spell spun by DMRC, which seems to have been anointed the one-stop shop for all transportation solutions, even those with no relation to mass transit! The latter has a lot of vested interest in pushing its one-size-fits-all solution, as is evident from its proposal to use Standard gauge (used in the Delhi Metro) instead of the Broad Guage (used in the rest of the Indian railway network), which means that the two systems will never be compatible - forget having trains run on either network.

It's so early in the day for HSR (nothing more than a presentation, yet another shell company and a Face Book quip or two!) that the State Government still has the option of stepping back from economic suicide. Now, if only they would listen.......!

Do We Need Bullet Trains?

Over the last few days, a High Speed Rail system linking Trivandrum to Bangalore and Chennai, as well as to Mangalore, has been proposed. While this seems like a sure-shot way to enter the 21st century in terms of infrastructure on the heels of Japan, France and, most recently, China, do we really need bullet trains at cost of over Rs 160,000 Crores ($ 34 Billion)?!

Act One: The Government of India decides in 2009 to set up High Speed Rail lines along six corridors. However, the only corridor proposed in South India is Bangalore-Chennai-Coimbatore-Ernakulam. Apparently some gent at the Railways forget the State's Capital and biggest city! 

Act Two: Last week, a high-level meeting in Trivandrum, chaired by the CM decided to go ahead with the implementation of a High Speed Rail corridor between Trivandrum and Mangalore, via Ernakulam at the trifling cost of Rs 160,000 Crores. Yes, ladies and gentlemen,  One-Hundred-and-Sixty-Thousand-Crores, about 13 times Kerala State's annual plan for 2011-12!

Act Three: The Central Government decides to extend the proposed HSR line to Trivandrum (no surprise, they want the line to have some chance of success right?) and amend the pre-feasibility study accordingly. Our enterprising CM immediately claims that he saved Rs 50,000 Crores on his Facebook page! That would be like my claiming that I just saved a few million bucks because I decided not to buy that Gulfstream jet which I could never afford anyways! What a joke!

Jokes apart, the gazillion rupee question is do we need bullet trains? This project will cost almost as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Kerala, that's a rather humbling figure.

What is High Speed Rail?

HSR is typically defined as a passenger rail system capable of operating at speeds exceeding 200 Km/hr, although many systems in Japan, France, Germany and China operate in excess of 300 Km/hr.

HSR's history began with the stream-lined steam trains of the early 20th Century, built up through diesel-electric and gas turbine propelled trains in the middle of the century before truly breaking out through the electric-powered Japanese Shinkansens and French TGVs.Thereafter, HSR has spread throughout Europe, in a limited manner in the US and now to China. It's now perceived as a viable alternative to short and medium-haul air travel and is often a favored public investment for Governments looking to pump in money to boost their economies.

And how is HSR different from ordinary rail systems? The most obvious difference is the rolling stock, those sleek bullet-shaped trains using stream-lined, high-power locomotives and high-tech passenger cars. But the railway lines themselves are high-tech, usually continuously welded and replete with sensors. The track alignment also needs to be devoid of sharp bends and gradients which means that the route usually has to go over, under or through obstacles like roads, rivers, hills and urban areas. All of this means, that HSR is very expensive when compared to conventional rail, perhaps as much as ten times more.

Why HSR?

HSR competes with road and air travel. In the case of the former, HSR has higher capacity, higher speed of travel and is much more environmentally friendly but is suitable only for inter-city travel as opposed to intra-city travel, where mass transit systems such as monorails and MRTS comes into play. Against aircraft, which are much faster, HSR is competitive at distances of up to 600 Km, where the sum of time taken to travel to and at airports and actual flight times, is often greater than time spent on HSR because they tend to run from city center to city center and seldom experience congestion-related delays.

This sounds pretty good in Kerala, where the distance from Trivandrum to Ernakulam is about 220 Km, to Kozhikode is about 400 Km and to Kasargode is 560 Km. Our roads and rail lines transport very high volumes of passenger traffic. A North-South HSR line sounds a no-brainer. Right?

Well, no.

First of all, let's consider the price-point of HSR. A ticket is likely to cost at least 2-3 times more than the fare of an air-conditioned chair car today. In fact, it would be comparable to the air-fare between Trivandrum and Ernakulam, which is upwards of Rs 1000. This means that the demand for this service is likely to be similar to that for air travel between the two cities, which is not exactly breaking down the gates at this point. One might argue that the Japanese and European HSR systems carry billions of passengers a year, but those are nations with 20 times the per-capita GDP of India and where air travel is wide-spread as opposed to the less than 5% of our population that uses that mode of travel. The best comparison is China, where despite massive funding by the Government, the HSR network's high ticket rates are proving to be quite a headache. (A ticket between Shanghai and Beijing costs upwards of $ 90, compared to the per-capita income of $ 4,300)

Next is the gargantuan cost of the system. With a price tag of Rs 160,000 Crores (let's discount our CM's creative accounting, looks like that day at IIM-K has gone to his head!), it looks more like the white whale (Moby Dick, please excuse!) than a white elephant. To put this into perspective, this project will cost 40 times what is needed to build the Vizhinjam project out to all its phases or will place each of us (man, woman and child) under Rs 60,000 of debt!

Of course, Kerala has its own quirks such as the paucity of land and the paranoia about access controlled transportation systems. After all, one of the slogans that de-railed the much-touted predecessor of HSR, the Expressway project, was the fact that it would divide the State into two. Guess what, HSR tracks are strictly fenced off (you don't want an auto straying into the path of train barreling down at 350 Km/hr), so the same (absolutely hare-brained) concerns are likely to be raised again. Plus, a 20 meter (that's what the proponents claim!) wide strip of land, 600 Km long would need to be acquired. Hmmm, about 12 Square Kms = 3000 acres.

Finally, does it all make any financial sense?  What would it cost to build and operate. Let's consider a simple scenario of Trivandrum - Ernakulam, which would see the highest traffic and would be built first.  The Capital Cost is estimated at around Rs 45,000 Crores, let's take Rs 50,000 Crores. Since the Central Government has not committed to any funding ( and is unlikely to, considering the state of its finances), the money will have to be raised from development finance institutions (read World Bank, ADB, JICA etc) and from the commercial markets. Even if we assume a tame interest rate of 7%, the interest cost alone works out to a whopping Rs 3500 Crores a year. And then HSR systems have high costs of operation and maintenance, with many components including the trains themselves being imported. 5% of the capital cost would be a good figure to start with, and this works out to another Rs 2500 Crores. So, a conservative total of Rs 6000 Crores/year. And this without allotting funds to repay the loans or for maturity of project-based bonds!

How much money will it make? The current proposal talks about trains every 30 minutes in either direction during 7 peak hours (6 - 10 AM and 5 - 8 PM) and every hour during the rest of the day. A total of 31 X 2 = 62 trains a day. The proposal also says that each train will have slightly over 800 seats. That means the total carrying capacity would be around 50,000 passengers a day, and assuming 90% occupancy (!!), the HSR would carry about 45,000 passengers each day. Let's assume everyone pays the end-to-end fare of Rs 1000/trip, leading to a daily revenue of Rs 4.5 Crores and an annual revenue of Rs 1642 Crores.

(Of course, this assumes that there are 45,000 people out there who would be willing to pay a thousand bucks to travel from Trivandrum to Ernakulam and vice versa. To put that into perspective, that is probably an order of magnitude more than the number of travelers between the two cities using air travel or air-conditioned train cars.)

So that leaves HSR slightly under Rs 4400 Crores in the red! Even if we only look at O&M costs (if Sree Padmanabhaswamy contributes the capital!), an annual subsidy of over Rs 1000 Crores is needed to keep the system running.

In case, I made it over complex, the HSR is NOT financially viable. (Not that such minor details have dissuaded proponents of projects like the one Mr Sreedharan (Yes, he is behind HSR as well! Surprise, surprise!) is pushing in the second city of the State.)

Is there a Better Alternative?

I can already imagine many of you, especially those who fervently believe that the current incumbent of Cliff House coined the word "development", would be grumbling that I am being a bitter nay-sayer. In my defense, I am not trying to shoot this down and propose that all of us crawl along congested rail tracks and roads till the end of time, I have a couple of possible alternatives which will not push the State into Chapter 11.

First, let's assume the ideal case that the Government of India agrees to take care of all the funding, at least for the Trivandrum - TN border (to Coimbatore) stretch. The project goes out on a BOT basis and a private developer takes the bid, no doubt with substantial (hopefully, less than 100%) Viability Gap Funding from GoI, possibly as an annuity. In this case, the O&M subsidy could be shared between GoI and GoK. This could be potentially met from the extra tax revenue of economic developed spurred by the new HSR system. Given the state of the Central Government's finances, with the National Highway program running out of steam and the Indian Railways on the verge of bankruptcy, this sounds an unlikely scenario as of now. And then again, even if GoI coughed up the money, that would be eventually out of our pockets.

Second, we could go ahead with building two new tracks from Trivandrum to Ernakulam (and to the Kerala - TN border) on a fresh alignment which suits HSR. However, the tracks will be built to a lower specification, perhaps for speeds of up to 150-200 Km/hr and the trains would be similar to today's Shatabdi. Eventually, as the market becomes more developed, the tracks could be upgraded and high speed trains introduced. This would certainly be cheaper but given the need for major land acquisition, it would still be very expensive and socially disruptive.

Finally, there is the pragmatic option. The current Trivandrum - Ernakulam rail lines are heavily congested, operating at upwards of 110% of rated capacity. With a deep-water container transshipment terminal coming up at Trivandrum and rapid urbanization of the Capital and Ernakulam, both cargo and passenger traffic are likely to surge. Instead of breaking the Treasury on HSR, why not build two more tracks more or less along the same alignment (which avoids heavily built-up areas for the most part)? The new tracks would better in many ways, continuously welded and avoiding the worst bends and gradients. These can make use of existing stations. They would also have only gated railway crossings, either manned or automated.

So two more tracks running maddeningly slow trains? Not exactly. Even tracks not dedicated for HSR service can accommodate some pretty fast trains.The Acela Express is a high-speed train operated by Amtrak between Boston and Washington D.C. on legacy tracks which received only comparatively minor modifications to accommodate the sleek trains which can are capable of hitting 250 Km/Hr. 

 Image Courtesy: Wikipedia

The Acela was my first HSR experience and these trains are some of the very few across the world which actually make money, having captured almost 40% of the high-speed travel demand in the densely populated North-East corridor which includes Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington D.C. The Acela incorporates a nifty feature to run on legacy tracks, it tilts as it negotiates bends! The Acela's average speed is restricted well below its maximum by the inadequacy of old overhead electric supply lines and old tracks, both of which are being upgraded. An Acela-clone, running on modern tracks with a modern overhead supply system could easily average over 200 Km/Hr, covering the distance between Trivandrum and Ernakulam in just about an hour!

There is another major advantage of this solution. Local trains would continue to use the existing track. The new tracks would be used only for the HSR trains, which means that there would be a lot of spare line capacity on the new lines. This could be utilized for high-speed freight services. No, I am not crazy. There are freight trains that run nearly at HSR speeds, the one which most readily comes to mind is the Eurotunnel Shuttle. This routinely runs at 150 Km/Hr.

 Image Courtesy: bram_souffreau @ Flickr

In fact, they are already talking about freight trains running at 200 Km/Hr on the proposed Dedicated Freight Corridors. One specific type of freight train comes to mind, container trains running between Vizhinjam and Ernakulam, Mangalore, Coimbatore, Chennai and Bangalore. Operating at speeds in excess of 100 Km/Hr and during off-peak hours, these trains could link India's premier container terminal to important cargo sources/destinations like Bangalore or Coimbatore in 9 hours flat. This kind of service allows the Vizhinjam project to expand its effective hinterland to as far as Bangalore, wherein it becomes much faster and often cheaper to send a container by fast container train to Trivandrum and get it loaded directly onto a 11,000 TEU mainline container ship than send it to Mangalore or Ernakulam and have it loaded on to a smaller ship from which it would be transshipped at Vizhinjam, Colombo or Dubai. High-speed cargo movement can be achieved with existing locomotives and with relatively minor modifications to the rolling-stock. In my view, this ability to move cargo at high speed is the USP of this option.

Yes, the last option is not exactly HSR as you would see in Tokyo, Paris or Shanghai although an Acela clone looks as much of a bullet train as....well...a bullet train! Do we want to spend an immense amount of extra money to travel 300 Km/Hr instead of 200-250 Km/Hr? Is it worth spending Rs 50,000 Crores to travel between Trivandrum and Ernakulam in 45 minutes when we can traverse the same distance in just over an hour, by spending just over 10-15% of that (a new pair of double gauge electrified lines will cost about Rs 20 Crores/Km plus up to Rs 1500 Crores for the high-speed train-sets - a single train-set costs about $ 30-40 Million - Rs 150-200 Crores)? 

Personally, the answer is NO! I hope that the Government gets a competent agency that has no motivation to recommend a ludicrously expensive white elephant (a good selection criteria would be to exclude anyone whose name looks like "DM_ _") and gets an independent study done whose aim should be to identify all rail-based options for efficient passenger AND goods traffic, not just to look at options WITHIN the HSR model. This way, all of us may save some real money and time!

The Next Big One - Cap Gemini lands in Trivandrum

Hot on the heels of Oracle Corporation that officially commenced operations from Technopark last month and announcements that IT giants Aegis and ITC Infotech would soon commence operations at the center of Kerala's IT world, here comes the largest technology company in Europe, Cap Gemini, which is all set to launch its latest global center at Technopark soon. In fact, the French tech giant has already started putting out feelers for employees to come to Trivandrum.

Technopark and Trivandrum are heating up on the Indian IT scene, a fact acknowledged by many CEOs at the recently concluded NASSCOM summit at Trivandrum, where many of the top bosses expressed a strong interest in setting up shop in Trivandrum, even chastising the media for failing to let the world know how hot Trivandrum really is! NASSCOM also opened its first office outside the top 7 Metros, at Technopark, another endorsement of the IT's hub coming of age!

Looks like things are changing, we are now in the big league, big time. Stay tuned and strapped in!

Getting Back on Track - Railway Development in Trivandrum

After years of heady promises and Budget proposals, the development of railway infrastructure in and around Trivandrum has fallen far short of where it should be given the growth of the city, high-technology and the upcoming deep water port at Vizhinjam. With the Indian Railways facing serious resource constraints, let's take a pragmatic look at how we can achieve maximum impact with the least cost possible.
 
Once upon a time, I talked about how Trivandrum Central would be upgraded to a world-class rail terminus, Lalu Prasad's new mantra for the upgradation of important stations (18 in all, if I recall correctly) including New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Trivandrum. That was four years ago, and since then we have heard nothing else but for a few vague mentions in successive Rail Budgets. One would have been forgiven for thinking that the grandiose idea was mere lip-service, and now it is official. The Railways have given up on the prototypical "World-class" station, New Delhi, and decided to proceed with a much humbler, in-house upgrade. The fact that there is no confidence that the rail hub in India's Capital and largest city can be re-developed, bodes ill for the historic station in Kerala's Capital and largest city. Combined with the near-zero progress in the development of the much-touted Kochuveli Satellite Rail Terminal and the proposed railway station and yard at Nemom, not to mention the still-invisible MEMU (commuter trains on the mainline) and a long list of announced-but-still-on-paper trains, the scorecard of the Railways is looking very dismal for our city.

 Trivandrum Central (Image Courtesy: Wikipedia)

Despite being one of the busiest stations in South India (second only to Chennai) and having robust revenues (Rs 585 Crores from passengers alone in 2010-11),Trivandrum has been on the receiving end of neglect from the Railways for some time now, especially since a lot of decision making authority was shifted to Chennai from the Trivandrum Division. Even projects such as the expansion at Kochuveli, that were formally announced and alloted budgetary support, have made scant progress. Sadly, the latest effort to jump-start the development of these project by holding a meeting of the Railway Minister and his team in Trivandrum seems to have a cropper without any firm plans being put in place, save for the announcement of a yet another official to "coordinate" developmental activities in Trivandrum. Dr Shashi Tharoor did manage to take the Minister on a tour of the facilities in Trivandrum and explain the crying needs of the day to him, and one hopes that this will bear some fruit. All in all, one is left wondering why the Trivandrum Division, which earns hundreds of Crores for the Railways, is saddled with old, second-rate coaches (even for the so-called flagship Rajdhani Express!) and what can be at best described as step-motherly treatment?

Now that it is pretty clear that we cannot expect much munificence from the cash-strapped and unsympathetic Railways, it would be prudent to let go of grandiose plans like two-level platforms (yeah, we will still have to go to Europe or China to see those!) and focus on what all can be achieved at minimum expense that can have the maximum impact.

Trivandrum Central

Kerala's busiest station is congested beyond belief, its 5 platforms proving very unequal to the task of handling over 50 trains a day. To add to the congestion of a city-center station is the need to have nearly a dozen stabling lines and a Coach Care Center. At various times, it has been proposed to shift the non-operating lines and the Center to Kochuveli and Nemom, and to replace them with at least another 5 platforms. Although Kochuveli now has a couple of platforms and stabling/sick lines, these are hardly adequate even for the growing number of trains based at the station let alone for decongesting Central. And Nemon seems even further down below the horizon, at this point.

 Jam-packed! (Image Courtesy: Me @ Flickr.com)

So what are the quick-wins at Trivandrum Central?

• Shift as many parked rakes as possible on to the unused lines at the Kochuveli goods yard and even to Kazhakkoottam and Nemom (this will necessitate additional shunting but that should be manageable on a temporary basis)
• Construct at least two additional platforms at Trivandrum Central immediately (freeing up 4 stabling/sick lines should provide enough space for this); these could be used both for the MEMU service and for long-distance trains
• Construct Multi-Level Car Parks (MLCPs) on the land available near the Thampanoor flyover and on Powerhouse road. These can be done on a PPP basis so that there is no capital burden for the Railways.
• Extend the South pedestrian overbridge to cover all platforms; evaluate extending the North overbridge to the bus terminal
• Open the North entrance (well constructed but closed ever since its inauguration a few years ago!) opposite the bus terminal, with proper access control and potentially with additional ticketing counters
• Upgrade all platforms to the standards of Platform One with improved floors, digital signage and other amenities
• Provide additional high-mast lighting on both sides of the Station and add more lights to the platforms
• Provide fee Wi-fi on all platforms; this could be easily arranged through a sponsorship

These steps can be undertaken at minimal expense, and can be acted upon immediately.

On a slightly longer term, perhaps in the next four years or so, once Nemon becomes atleast partially operational, the Coach Care Center can be shifted there and the land thus freed up can be leased out to a budget hotel operator such as Tata's Ginger or Accor's ETap to set up a 150 key no-frills hotel. This would not only create a rail-hotel at no expense to the Railways, it could also bring in steady revenue through lease-rentals and/or a revenue share.

Additional land could be leased out on a long term for commercial development, such as a shopping mall, because the Railways have almost 800 feet of frontage onto the newly widened Powerhouse Road. This could help pay for further improvements at the Station. This could include setting up another three or four platforms, to take the total to ten or eleven. Two platforms can be dedicated to the MEMU/commuter services.

With its unbeatable location in the Center of the city and its proximity to other transit hubs such as the Thampanoor bus terminal, it is for certain that Trivandrum Central will continue to be the busiest station in Kerala for a long time and the best tactic for its development would be to ensure that only passenger embarkation/disembarkation happens here with all other ancillary activities such as maintenance shifted out to Nemom or Kochuveli.

Using the strategy outlined above, the outlay for the next couple of years may only be about Rs 20-30 Crores with a significant portion of the overall budget in the near future coming through PPP. It is important that all commercial development - MLCPs, hotel and commercial - be given out to private players and not done directly by the Railways or agencies like TRIDA, whose record is pretty dismal.

Kochuveli Railway Terminal

What started with a lot of fanfare as a project to develop the once-sleepy station at Kochuveli into a rail terminal which would almost completely replace Trivandrum Central as the city's main station has petered out into a crawling saga of fund-starved construction, which has only thrown up three platforms, a few sick/stabling lines and precious little else. A number of trains have started operating out of the terminal but its infrastructure continues to be woefully inadequate.

After a lot of talk in the last six years, the Railways coughed up only Rs 30 Lakhs last year, against a minimum of Rs 10 Crores needed to establish the basic infrastructure needed to handle the 28 trains that are operated from it every week. This being the case, the following would be a viable action plan for the station:

• Complete the island platform and at least five pit/stabling lines in the coming year; this would allow for some pit lines to be freed up at Trivandrum Central
• Complete the foot overbridge linking both sides of the terminal; there are frequent bus services along the Veli road on the other side
• Ensure stops for as many long distance trains as possible at Kochuveli to ensure round the clock activity which would allow for amenities such as taxis, buses and food outlets to be operated viably; this would also reduce passenger congestion at Central
• Erect high-mast lights for the terminal premises and street lighting for the approach road which needs to be widened to 3 lanes
• Establish a MLCP on a PPP basis
• Complete an additional 2 platforms and a total of 10-12 pit/stabling lines by 2013

This course of action would necessitate no more than Rs 10 Crores, all of which have already been allocated but is yet to physically disbursed. Over the longer term, an additional Rs 20-30 Crores would be needed for the additional platforms and pit/stabling lines.

In the meantime, 2-3 stabling lines can be developed at Kazhakkoottam station to help take the load off Central, land for this is available at the station and the expense involved in laying the lines would be minimal. Kazhakkoottam also needs improved signage and ticketing facilities, together with stoppages for more peak hour trains and more frequent bus shuttle services from and to Technopark Phases I, II and III.

Nemon Terminal

There were big plans for Nemon, halfway between Central and the proposed cargo yard at Balaramapuram (Junction?!) where the spur line from the Vizhinjam deep water port will meet the mainline. As with the other wishful plans that we have heard from the Trivandrum Division, nothing has transpired so far. The reason is again the same, no money has actually been allocated in the Budget, and on top of that, there is apparently a need to acquire a large parcel of land for the station to be developed to its full potential.

The Railways already have 30 acres of land here, which seems to be more than sufficient for the Coach Care Center (CCC) to be set up although it seems that most of the land is not along the rail line, hence the need for acquiring more land. I would hazard a guess that the maintenance facility which need not be along the rail line, as a platform needs to be, can be set up on the existing land as long as it can be connected to the main line. In comparison, the current CCC facility at Trivandrum Central occupies only about 5 acres of land in the tightly-packed complex. If land is not an impediment, this may be accomplished at a cost of around Rs 50 Crores (a rule-of-thumb figure, considering the fact that a massive coach maintenance facility in Bihar, that sprawls over 118 acres, set to be commissioned in November will cost Rs 230 Crores), invested in two or three phases. Considering the fact that all the equipment can be shifted from the existing facility, the incremental cost would be the civil work on the sheds and new tracks to park the coaches under repair. If budgetary support can be found, this project can be completed in 18-24 months, without waiting for land acquisition to inch its way to a conclusion and this would free up land at Central for commercial development.

In the longer run, additional pit and stabling lines can be added at Nemom so that all North-bound trains operating from Trivandrum Central can be parked here till they are shunted to the platforms there, converting Central to a pure "pass-through" station and freeing up land for the final build-out to 11-12 platforms. Nemon also needs pass through platforms to be used as a commuter rail facility to service the rapidly developing southern part of the metro region.

Commuter Rail, Cargo and other Initiatives

Even a year after the completion of base facilities in Kollam, the long-awaited Mainline Electric Multiple Unit (MEMU) service shows little sign of commencing operations between Neyyatinkara and Kollam, connecting Trivandrum with its southern and northern satellites, including Attingal and Varkala en route. The MEMU is basically a commuter train, such as those that form the backbone of the transport system in Mumbai, but which is capable of running on the main line instead of just on segregated commuter rail lines. The MEMU is designed to move high-volumes of commuters over relatively short distances (an hour's travel or so). It is imperative that at least 3 MEMU rakes be immediately made available so that services on the Kollam - Neyyatinkara stretch can be run every 30 minutes during peak hours (7 AM to 8.30 AM and 5 PM to 6.30 PM) and every 45 minutes to an hour off peak. The introduction of the MEMU service will allow the shuttle trains to be taken out of service and their coaches redeployed to long distance trains. The services along the Kollam-Varkala-Attingal-Trivandrum-Balaramapuram-Neyyatinkara would help in the integration of the Trivandrum metropolitan region and the merger of Kollam into it as a satellite city.

This is a nearly zero cost initiative since the MEMU infrastructure is already in place and the induction of the MEMU rakes would be in effect offset by the freeing up of the existing shuttle rakes which can be redeployed to other services.


On a longer term, the proposed Chenganoor-Adoor-Trivandrum line and/or the proposed Erumeli-Punalur-Trivandrum line can be routed to proceed via Venjaramoodu and Nedumangad to meet the mainline at Nemom. This would provide a commuter ring line to the east of the CBD where MEMUs can be operated to draw in commuters from catchments along the the M.C.Road such as Kottarakara Anchal and Adoor.

The commissioning of the Vizhinjam deep water port will definitely bring additional traffic on to the rail network around Trivandrum even if the primary purpose of the port is transshipment. There will be some hinterland cargo for direct delivery/pickup from Southern Kerala and Southern Tamilnadu, as well as from key industrial clusters like Coimbatore and Bangalore, drawn by the direct access to the biggest mainline ships that will call at Vizhinjam, instead of getting cargo transshipped via, say, Colombo. If a coal terminal is set up at Vizhinjam, and the coal is shipped out by train instead of by a conveyor belt or barges/coastal coal carrying ships, this could mean 30,000 tons or ten rakes will need to be moved daily (for a annual throughput of 10 Million tons of coal). With the rail network running well above 100% capacity at present, this would necessitate the construction of a third or fourth line. The bare minimum requirement would be the immediate doubling of the Trivandrum - Kanyakumari line, on to which the Vizhinjam port would be connected at Balaramapuram. Unfortunately, the Railways seem to be feigning ignorance of this tiny little development, even while they cleared the construction of the rail spur to the port last year. Consequently the Trivandrum Division needs to prepare a master plan for the entire network, not just for Balaramapuram station, to handle the cargo traffic due to the port that is all set to be commissioned in 2014-15, and also ask Concor to immediately conduct studies to link Vizhinjam with the Inland Container Depots (ICDs) in key locations such as Bangalore, Coimbatore and Ernakulam as well as to set up an ICD in proximity to the port.

 A Concor Double-stacked Container Train (Image Courtesy: Trainweb.com)

Finally, there is one relatively inexpensive but impactful change which the Railways need to make at the earliest. In fact, it would probably cost no more than a few dabs of paint and changes to websites. The change in question is to modify the name of Kochuveli station to Trivandrum Kochuveli (TVK?), Nemom to Trivandrum Nemom (TVN?) and Kazhakkoottam to Trivandrum Technopark (TKP?). When I last enquired about this with the Railways, they mentioned that it could be done with a simple request from the State Government. Painless changes, but ones which would spare thousands of people the trouble of figuring out the fact that a station with the code "KCVL" is actually located in Trivandrum!


Dr Shashi Tharoor has encapsulated many of the points, mentioned above, in a letter that he had sent to the Railway Minister, but these initiatives now need to be pursued with renewed vigour well in advance of the Rail Budget due in February 2012. The State Government too needs to move on from symbolic gestures like hosting the Railway Minister at Trivandrum and create a time-bound game-plan to take a priortized list of projects to pursue with the Railways using its new clout at the Center (being of the same flavor as the Central Govt.) as well as getting all 20 MPs from Kerala on board. Simply put, the initiatives listed above will not cost the Railways more than about Rs 100 Crores over the next 3 years, and this must be put in perspective with the Rs 900 Crores that the Trivandrum Division earned in 2010-11, Rs 600 Crores of which was from passenger traffic alone. By developing additional passenger and cargo capacity, the Railways stand to double or triple this figure and hence, what is proposed is a big win-win.


It's all very good to have ambitious visions for the development of the rail infrastructure in and around Trivandrum, but in today's resource constrained context for the Railways, and given the urgent need for many of these projects, it is most pragmatic to go in for the easy-wins first and to proceed on a track which minimizes immediate expenses and which tries to find revenues to feed costs along the way. Fingers crossed on many of these proposals making coming to fruition, in which case the Railways stand to keep playing an important role in and benefiting from the development of Trivandrum.