MONORAIL OR SKYBUS - THE HIDDEN AGENDA. Averthanus L. DSouza.
There is more to the controversy about Monorail versus Skybus than meets the ordinary eye. The Rane governments decision to call for Expressions of Interest for the construction of a monorail system in Goa, without first informing the citizens of Goa about the fate of the Skybus project, smacks of deviousness. According to the reports published in the press, the Commissioner of Railway Safety has submitted his report to the Central Government on the accident which befell the Skybus on its trial run in September 2004. However, intriguingly, the content of this report is not available to the Konkan Railway Corporation, which is responsible for the project, and under whose supervision the test was conducted. This is highly suspicious. Furthermore, we are told that an expert committee has submitted its report to the Union Urban Development Ministry on the technical viability of the project. Again, according to KRCs Public Relations Officer, Baban Ghatge: We have received directions to carry out further trails of the skybus. The directions are being implemented. According to him, the expert committee has submitted its report to the Union Government, but the KRC has no details about the findings. In spite of not knowing what the findings of the expert committee are, the KRC is going ahead with the further trials of the Skybus at an additional cost over and above the Rs. 50 crore which has already been invested in the project so far. From a purely common sense point of view this appears to be utter stupidity. To carry on further trials without knowing what the expert committee has to say about the cause of the accident which killed one KRC engineer and several workers, is highly unprofessional, to say the least. We are also informed that these further trials are proposed to be conducted before the Chairman of the Railway Board comes to Margao, Goa, to preside over the KRC Founders Day function on October 15th., 2005. In the meantime, the Rane Cabinet has given its approval, in principle, to the monorail project, which, we are informed, will be contracted out on the Build, Operate and Transfer (BOT) principle. This raises many issues of which the citizens of Goa are kept in the dark. In the first place, no explanation has yet been forthcoming of why the Skybus crashed on its very first trail run in spite of the exaggerated claim that it was a tested and proven system. In a letter to the Editor of the Times of India, the father of the Skybus project, Mr. B. Rajaram, claimed that With the tested and proven Skybus system, the international metro systems are obsolete. ! !. In this letter, Mr. B. Rajaram asserted that the Worlds First running Skybus test track at Goa, which Mr. Rajaram constructed and conducted the trial runs, proved all the required safety parameters to be of international standard (2004-05). ( Note that he uses the third person in referring to himself.) After the accident, Mr Rajaram, who was in Margao at the time of the accident, declared that he would personally conduct an enquiry into the accident. To the commonsense of the common man this sounds very much like asking the criminal to conduct the prosecution in his own trial. To add confusion to the already stupid pronouncements of B. Rajaram, he is quoted by the Press ( vide http://www.outlookindia.com/pti_print.asp? id=251704) as saying We did not anticipate such an accident but we definitely designed in a way to prevent it. To that extent our designing was successful as the Skybus remained suspended in the air and did not derail. However, we shall make modifications in the design to ensure that the bogey does not oscillate more than it should. Can anyone make any sense of this statement? Or is Mr. Rajaram ready to be consigned to an appropriate institution of mental health care.? As further proof of his incoherence, Mr. Rajaram, in responding to a report on the accident, has written : By Physics, the coach should not have hit the column, even at the speed of 50 kmph because by design enough clearances are provided for centrifugal action. But the coach has hit. Hence we do not have any other explanation other than, what has been brought out. Are we dealing here with a sane person, or what ? It might be useful, at this point, to remind ourselves that Mr. B. Rajaram, then Managing Director of Konkan Railway Corporation Ltd. was dealing with a Chief Minister in Goa who was a graduate of the IIT, Mumbai. Is it possible that these two technocrats were communicating in some esoteric language to which the ordinary mortal is not privy, or is it that technology was used to draw the wool over the eyes of the citizens of Goa, and by extension, the citizens of India? It does not require any training in technology to discern the inherent contradictions that were built into the Skybus project. There were not only unproven assertions made, but the then Government of Manohar Parrikar swallowed the glib proposals of Rajaram without checking out the technical parameters of the project, or making a techno-economic viability study of the proposal. Rajaram is now rubbing salt into our wounds and adding insult to injury by mouthing completely inane explanations, which do not make any sense to a person with ordinary intelligence. WHAT ABOUT THE MONORAIL PROJECT ? The Rane Cabinet has given its approval, in principle, to the construction of a monorail system to cover the entire State of Goa. According to press reports, the system is intended to connect the major towns of Margao, Panjim and Mapusa. Ranes Cabinet has not informed the public about the basis on which it has given its consent to the calling of Expressions of Interest for the construction of this system. From available information it appears that the cost of construction of the monorail system comes to approximately Rs.60 crore per kilometer and for the entire stretch of about 45 kms. envisaged, it will cost approximately Rs.2,500 crore. The Minister for Transport has told the press that the Central Government has promised to provide 20 percent of the cost of the project. The citizens want to know why the Central Government has promised to invest 20 percent of the cost of the project, when, according to the Goa Cabinets decision, the project will not cost the government anything as it will be constructed on the principle of Build, Operate and Transfer. The citizens are also curious to know whether the Rane Cabinet has really applied its mind to the monorail project before giving its consent to floating tenders inviting EoI. >From available information, a monorail system is neither a rapid nor a mass transport system. It is suitable only for very limited areas such as airport complexes or amusement parks. The Bombardier Company which put up a monorail system in Los Angeles abandoned further expansion plans because the project proved to be disastrous. The Government of France has discouraged this system because of serious doubts about its safety. What happens if the coach catches fire midway between two stations? The passengers are likely to be roasted alive. Again what happens if the movement of the coaches stops midway? Access to and from the coaches is available only at the stations?. The economics of the system has also not been published to prove that it is viable. At the time of the Skybus proposal, Derek Almeida, writing in the Gomantak Times (Friday, November 21, 2003) had indicated that, according to the Konkan Railway Corporations own calculations, to be viable, the Skybus would have needed to transport 2.5 lakh passengers every day. Where will this passenger volume come from? According to tentative research done by the Kadamba Transport Corporation, it was estimated that the total volume of passengers by the Kadamba Transport Corporation on 219 routes throughout Goa using the entire fleet of 376 buses (both KTC and privately owned) was of the order of about 65,000 per day. This was far below the 2.5 lakh passengers required to make the Skybus economically viable. The traffic between Mapusa and Panaji alone by the KTC and private operators was estimated to be 300 trips both ways carrying approximately 14,700 passengers in both directions. That the Government of Goa went ahead with the Skybus project without having studied it carefully speaks volumes about the capability of the Government to make rational decisions about major projects affecting the citizens of Goa. The decision about the monorail project falls into the same category of irresponsible decision making by the Rane Cabinet, notwithstanding the fiasco (both technical and financial) of the Skybus project. The irresponsibility of the Rane Cabinet is further demonstrated by the fact that it has decided that it will be up to the bidders of the contract to make the techno-economic feasibility studies and to decide on the technical as well as the economic parameters of the project. ( Shades of Manohar Parrikar !)