BW Communities

‘Look For City Specific Solutions’

BW Online Bureau Nov 08, 2014

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?><root available-locales="en_US," default-locale="en_US"><static-content language-id="en_US"><![CDATA[Most people take life easy after retirement. But Elattuvalapil Sreedharan, 79, has been on the job since he retired from the Indian Railways in 1990. The managing director of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) will hang up his boots at the end of the year. He will leave behind a legacy that is quite hard to replicate. The Metroman, as he is also known, has redefined the way large projects are implemented in India. He spoke to BW's Anup Jayaram and M. Rajendran on urban transportation and the way forward for a country that is urbanising at a frenetic pace. Excerpts: Where do you see urban transportation heading in the future? Will metro rail transport meet travel needs of people in cities over the next 20 years? I am also the chairman of a working group set up by the Planning Commission to advise it on urban transport in the 12th Plan. We have been debating this issue at length. Generally, if the threshold limit of the volume of traffic in a particular corridor is more than 15,000 passenger car units or PCUs (by 2021), a metro is necessary. Otherwise, it will not be possible to manage the traffic. Any city with more than three million people must have a metro system. We are yet to get the latest census numbers, but even with the current estimates, at least 20 cities will have a population of more than 3 million. Each of these would require a metro. <table style="width: 300px;" align="right" border="0" cellpadding="8" cellspacing="8"> <tbody> <tr> <td><img src="/businessworld/system/files/Metro-Staion_TS_300x186.jpg" style="float: right;" height="186" width="300"></td> </tr> <tr> <td>CROWD SERVICE: DMRC estimates that ridership will touch 2 million by end of the year (BW pic by Tribhuwan Sharma) </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> As a planner, my approach would be to ensure that when a city's population reaches 2 million, we should start planning for metro. In a country such as ours, a metro is a desirable service. It should be the backbone of transportation in a city. The main corridor should be a metro, the feeder services to the backbone can be in the form of BRT (bus rapid transit), normal bus services, even trams if a city can afford. Various combinations are possible. There cannot be one single formula for all cities — it will differ from city to city. A comprehensive transportation study should be done for each city to identify major corridors, depending upon the demand. If the volume of traffic is less than 8,000 PCUs, BRT can be a solution — but a temporary one. When the volume of traffic reaches 15,000 PCUs, a metro will be a necessity. If the BRT is at the ground level, switching over to a metro is not a problem. But if you have an elevated BRT corridor, it will come in the way of future metro projects. We have to be very careful even to suggest such an idea. Because once you have an elevated BRT, as some states are proposing, you cannot have an overhead metro on that route. That leaves us with just the option of going underground — which is very costly. Is that the reason why monorail projects have not taken off in India? No, monorail is not being thought of as an option because the cost of a monorail is equal to that of the metro. Mumbai is executing a monorail project and the cost has come to Rs 165 crore per km. That is the cost for a metro. But then the metro can carry more people. Further, the cost of operation and maintenance (of a monorail) is double (that of a metro). The monorail is not a viable option for urban transport. It may be a good option for an isolated area such as amusement parks to attract people, or a connection within an airport where the traffic is not very high. If that is the case, why do so many states in India want a monorail? This is mainly because of pressure from the monorail lobby. The Malaysian lobby is very active. That is why Jayalalithaa (chief minister of Tamil Nadu) has suddenly started speaking about monorail. But Kuala Lumpur has very good monorail and metro projects. Yes, but all of them are running into losses. They all have been taken over by the government. They have got two private metros — both of them ran into losses and threw up their hands in despair. You spoke about a comprehensive transportation study. Can you please elaborate on this? This is as per the stipulation of the ministry of urban development. It says that before you start planning on urban transport, do a comprehensive study, which will bring out what is the best mode of transport for the city. Do state governments have a role in preparing this study? Yes, state governments will have to ask for the study and pay 50 per cent of the cost of the study. The Centre or the city would bear the balance. Once the system is finalised, say, if the state opts for a metro, various alternatives are available then. One option is to go for a complete government-sponsored project. The second is to have a public-private partnership (PPP) model such as Hyderabad or Mumbai. Even in a fully government- sponsored project such as Delhi Metro, where central and state governments are fully involved and are responsible for profits and losses, they are equal partners. Then, there is the Chennai metro model where the company is a joint venture. Here, losses and the cost overrun becomes the responsibility of the state government — which is not desirable. Do you feel the PPP model will work in India? The PPP model has never been a success anywhere in the world, so far. But in India, we have started it in Mumbai, Hyderabad and the Delhi airport line. I have always advocated that a PPP model can be successful if the project can levy very high fares on customer, like in the airport express model in Delhi where the fare suggested is Rs 150 per journey. In a metro, the average cost is Rs 14-15. If the fee can be hiked 10 times that of normal metro, then the PPP model can be successful. In Mumbai, the work has been on for the past 6-7 years and it will take another 2-3 years for it to complete. In Hyderabad, work has not even started physically, though the contract was awarded two years ago. It is not a very happy experience. Ultimately, private concessionaires will find it so difficult to manage that they will ask for hefty subsidies, and the government will be forced to give it. break-page-break In the case of our own airport express model, the airport traveller can pay a high fare. The work has not been completed; it has taken so much time, and it has not come to the shape or standard that we wanted. But the airport express model may ultimately succeed because it can charge Rs 150 for each journey, provided the ridership increases. Today, Delhi Metro services are quite congested. So, did you get your planning right in terms of capacity? Yes, it is very crowded. It is a very good sign. We have touched the highest ridership of 1.83 million. We are taking steps to ease the overcrowding. On busy routes, all trains would be converted into six coaches by the end of the year (DMRC is planning to induct eight-coach trains by end 2013). Already, busy lines have six-coach trains. Every week, we are adding one coach in busy routes. We are also adding more trains. Overcrowding has come down now. When people find that they are able to travel more comfortably, more people will come. We estimate the ridership will touch 2 million by the end of the year. In retrospect, do you feel the overhead model is better than the underground model for metro transportation? If you do not want a metro to be a financial liability to the government, there should be a judicious mix of the under-ground and the elevated. In Lutyen's Delhi, no one will allow you to go elevated, so you have to go underground. An underground metro costs almost double or 2.5 times of an overhead model. There is nothing wrong in having an elevated metro rail. Many cities have it. Even the posh Dubai metro is elevated. That country can afford underground anywhere they want. Further, from the country's security and passenger's safety point of view, an elevated metro is better. <table style="width: 300px;" align="right" border="0" cellpadding="8" cellspacing="8"> <tbody> <tr> <td><img src="system/files/Mumbai-Mono-rail-Project_SBD_300x186.jpg" style="float: right;" height="186" width="300"></td> </tr> <tr> <td>MODEL PROJECT: DMRC has started reaching standards of metros in Hong Kong and Singapore (BW pic by Subhabrata Das) </td> </tr> </tbody> </table> The risk in an underground line is 4-5 times that of an elevated one. We should go for an elevated route wherever possible. Operational maintenance cost (for underground) is also 50 per cent more than that of an elevated line. If we have a fully underground metro, we will not be able to make any operational profit. But the original metros globally were totally underground… Yes, but they are heavily subsidised by the government. Even the operational and maintenance are subsidised. The entire capital cost is given by the government. In DMRC, the government has given 40 per cent and the rest is loan. We are servicing and repaying the loan to the Japanese, and we are not taking any subsidy from the government for operation and maintenance. Globally, which city has the best metro rail transit system? Why? Each metro has its own good points. Some of them are very modern and some of them are very comfortable. But if I were to choose from India's point of view, I would say the metros in Hong Kong and Singapore are giving very good service. DMRC has started to reach their standard. The Delhi metro has spawned a metro rail culture in the country. Do you see privately funded metro projects taking off in the future? DMRC has been a good model and an inspiration for new metros coming up in various cities. They are at an advantage as they can pick up many examples from us. But for us, it was work from scratch. But I would say, in spite of this advantage, metros in Bangalore, Chennai and Kolkata are not being completed at the same pace as DMRC. These projects are going slow and their pace has to be improved. Do you see smaller cities adopting the metro rail culture quickly? Unless there is sufficient traffic, a metro rail will become a financial burden on a city. That is why I have been insisting on a threshold limit of a minimum 2 million population and 12,000-15,000 riderships. How would you define urban transport? Urban transport is actually a social service. It is not a business proposition. But governments tend to take it as a business proposition. They want it to be profitable. It will never be profitable. If the government does not have to subsidise it, that is a great achievement. So we (the working group under the Planning Commission) are suggesting that since urban transport has to be a social service and the fare has to be kept low for common people, we have to make the metro system low cost. One of the suggestions is to give complete duty and tax concession to the public transport system. DMRC had this advantage in Phases I and II. In Phase III, the government has suggested that it will give grants instead of duty and tax concessions. The cost of travelling in public transport bus is very high because the road tax and registration fee and others account for more than 30 per cent of the cost of the bus. With such a cost system, how can you make a public transport viable? So we have suggested that bus transport should be declared an infrastructure project. That will give them access to infrastructure fund. Today, our country does not have a good urban bus model. We should have sleek and narrow low-floor buses. Not the ones what we have on Delhi roads. They are more expensive, but desirable. You want urban transport to be a social service. It is the same argument that the government gave when private telecom services were launched. Don't you think this will create a mess in urban transport as it did in telecom? In the case of telecom, the transfor-mation of technology led to a drop in cost. It cannot happen in urban transport. But we can still make the system low cost, if we go for large-scale indigenisation and standardisation. We should not depend upon import for everything. In India, Chennai, Bangalore, Delhi and Kolkata all have different specification of coaches. This will not help lower cost, unless there is standardisation followed by indigenisation. (This story was published in Businessworld Issue Dated 22-08-2011)