<div><strong>By Sanjeeva Shivesh</strong></div><div> </div><div>Of late, Union Road Transport and Highways Minister Nitin Gadkari has announced that the busy Dhaula Kuan-Gurgaon-Manesar route in national capital region (NCR) will soon get a new mode of transport in the form of Metrino — a Rs 4,000 crore project. According to several reports, the minister has said that the detailed project report has been prepared, and the work on the Metrino will kick start in the next four months. This will be the first such project in India and shall be funded by foreign investors.</div><div> </div><div><strong>What is Metrino?</strong></div><div>Metrino solution is an automated ropeway comprising of driverless 300kg pods hanging 5 to 10m above the street level from overhead guide-ways. These automatic and driverless vehicles or 'pods' can carry up to five passengers at a time. It's an innovative transportation method as each ride is on passenger demand. This means that instead of passenger waiting for the vehicle to come, there are vehicles waiting at stops, which passengers can just board and start moving. There are no timetables and no pre-defined routes. Therefore, this solution is also termed as personalised rapid transport (PRT).</div><div> </div><div>Metrino is Auckland (NZ) based successor of MISTER (Metropolitan Individual System of Transportation on an Elevated Rail)-PRT (developed in Poland by Olgierd Mikosza. The pod-based system is designed to move at a speed of 50 km per hour with each pod, on average spaced 10 m apart. The light steel truss based system uses existing right of way and is expected to cost considerably less. The 6ft by 20 ft off-line stops are usually on ground with parallel bays for quick entry and egress, from where the pods ascend or descend by 45 degrees on the main cogway. The Metrino stops can be positioned on the pavement or inside hotels, office or apartment buildings, malls, hospitals, cinemas and so on. </div><div> </div><div>According to the Metrino website, they have signed memorandum of understandings with about 20 cities in the world, but the solution has not been implemented anywhere.</div><div> </div><div><strong>Comparison with other forms of urban transport</strong></div><div>Any good comparison of public transport system requires an assessment on parameters of project cost, speed and throughput, on demand availability, and accessibility of the network.</div><div> </div><div><strong>Project development costs</strong></div><div>Delhi Metro's fully elevated 11.98 km Badarpur-Faridabad extension opened in 2015 has cost Rs 2,494 crore. The fully elevated 71.16 km Hyderabad Metro being developed by L&T is expected to cost Rs 17,000 crore at completion and the fully elevated 11.4 km Mumbai Metro 1 with 12 stations took Rs 4,321 crore. Thus, the average cost of a metro railway comes to close to Rs 250 crore per km.</div><div> </div><div>Further, these projects took at least 4 to 7 years to complete. Experts attribute 2 to 3 year of project delay to land acquisition. </div><div> </div><div>Comparatively, reports suggest that the cost of Metrino comes to Rs 50 crore per km and the 70km Dhaula Kuan-Gurgaon section is estimated to cost about Rs 4,000 crore. Gadkari has said that the project will be built in less than half the time it takes to build a Metro as it does not require land or major construction as pillars at long intervals would be erected in between the roads.</div><div> </div><div>On the face of it, Metrino offers unique construction and development advantages, hitherto missing in large-scale metro projects.</div><div> </div><div><strong>Operation and maintenance cost</strong></div><div>A quick review of O&M cost indicates that spent Rs 1,591 crore towards O&M while carrying 799.6 million commuters in 2013-14. As more than 80 per cent commuters travel about 10 km on DMRC network, we expect, the O&M cost approximately as Rs 2 per passenger per km.</div><div> </div><div>As we do not have a real-life data for O&M cost for Metrino, expert guesses can make us believe that operating cost of a lighter network shall be low. However, per commuter operating cost can change significantly with volume.</div><div> </div><div><strong>Throughput</strong></div><div>The through put metric used for urban transport systems is peak hour peak direction traffic (PHPDT). Usually, most metro systems would have PHPDT ranging from 20,000 to 50,000. A bus system had PHPDT ranging from 2000 (ordinary) to 20,000 (BRT).</div><div> </div><div>The 204 km DMRC system carried 31.75 commuters on Raksha Bandhan day. It is estimated that during the peak hour, the system had more than 300,000 commuters on its 6 lines taken together.</div><div> </div><div>The Metrino website informs that it can carry upto 6,000 passengers per direction per hour at an average speed of 50 km per hour. We expect the throughput to be much less in real life conditions. Also, there are limits to carrying capacities. At the maximum, 100 pods can be kept per km of guide-way. An inter-pod distance of less than 10m will infringe on safety. </div><div> </div><div>Obviously, the five times capital cost advantage in favour of Metrino is neutralised by four to eight times disadvantage in throughputs.</div><div> </div><div><strong>On demand availability and accessibility</strong></div><div>The USP of Metrino is on-demand availability. Unlike a metro railway or a bus solution, where passengers have to wait for the vehicle to arrive, the pods waiting at the stops can be quickly boarded. On a simple short length straight-line network, ideally 3 km to 15km, modern ropeway based PRT this has its benefits. </div><div> </div><div><strong>Can Metrino solve the traffic woes of Dhaula Kuan-Manesar?</strong></div><div>We know that commuter journeys are hardly ever simple. It has its own unique combinations of points and distances. That's the urban transportation planner problem. Such challenges can be well addressed by combining different modes and solutions - metro, BRT, light rail, ropeways, buses, shared cars and bicycles. In that context, Metrino fits as a nice short to intermediate distance solution. </div><div> </div><div>Dhaula Kuan-Manesar is one of the busiest commuter stretches in NCR. More than 2.5 lakh vehicles ply on NH-8 between Dhaula Kuan and Gurgaon and over 1 lakh vehicle play between Gurgaon and Manesar. Thus number of people commuting would be significantly higher. Think about 2030, when this number could really be more than double. </div><div> </div><div>Keeping this in mind, it shall be a blunder if NCR commits to a system with less than 100,000 people per day carrying capacity. What is needed is a high throughout transport corridor that has capability to move 5 lakh people per day.</div><div> </div><div>(<em>The author, Sanjeeva Shivesh, is CEO of The Entrepreneurship School, Gurgaon</em>)</div>
