The Hindu : Work begins on trial track of SkyBus Metro

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Thursday, Nov 13, 2003

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Work begins on trial track of SkyBus Metro

By Anand Parthasarathy

Bangalore/Madgaon (Goa) Nov. 12. An experimental track — 1.7-km long — will soon be the proving ground for India's own suspended-rail mass transit system, `SkyBus Metro'.

Last week, at Madgaon railway station in Goa, civil engineers of the Konkan Railway Corporation (KRC), began survey work prior to putting up the concrete pillars that will support the elevated rail system, nine metres above the ground, from which the electrically-driven passenger cars will hang.

Speaking to The Hindu, the KRC's Senior Division Engineer, Ravi Kapoor, explained that the corporation would lay out the circular track on its own land in Madgaon, adjacent to the railway station, where a fully functional prototype of a SkyBus Metro terminus, complete with computer-operated ticket vending machines, unmanned turnstiles and two alternative designs of the passenger car, was inaugurated by the Union Railway Minister, Nitish Kumar, on October 15. The track was expected to be ready for trial runs of the innovative mass transit system by March 2004, Mr. Kapoor explained.

The completely indigenous design of the SkyBus Metro is the work of the KRC which has attracted a consortium of 34 Indian companies to realise the prototype.

The Corporation has been aggressively promoting the concept with a number of States, as the most effective urban transport system of the future for metros such as Chennai, Coimbatore, Kochi, Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Faridabad/Gurgaon.

The scheme received a fillip two years ago, when the President, A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, then the Principal Scientific Adviser to the Government, examined it in detail and attested to its technical soundness.

The first agency in the country to commit itself to the SkyBus is the Goa Government, which has created a joint venture with the KRC to implement a link between capital Panaji to Mapusa in the first phase and another from Panaji to Miramar Beach (with a possible extension to Dona Paula) in the second phase.

The Kerala State Industrial Development Corporation (KSIDC) signed a memorandum of understanding with the KRC and the Bangalore-based Marshals group last year, to launch a feasibility study of the SkyBus Metro for Kochi.

In April this year, the State's Transport Minister, R. Balakrishna Pillai, said Kerala would go ahead with the project estimated at Rs. 850 crores-Rs. 1,000 crores, under Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) agreements. A 16.5-km track linking the Kalamassery industrial belt with the Ernakulam Railway Junction was identified.

To promote the idea for Coimbatore, the KRC identified the city-based G.M. Swamy Consortium earlier this year, to act as its local partner, having identified three stretches totalling 28 km where SkyBus would be most effective.

However, the KRC has been less successful in persuading its headquarter-city, Mumbai or Chennai in the South, to consider an aerial commuter system such as this, though in both metros, the main advantage — bare minimal demand of land on the ground — was a compelling consideration.

Six stretches in Chennai linking places such as Panagal Park, Luz, Santhome, Vadapalani, Mylapore, Chintadripet, St. Thomas Mount and Airport were identified by the KRC as most effective and feasible.

The airconditioned and remotely-controlled passenger cars for the prototype have been made by Bangalore-based PSU BEML and Goa-based Kineco. They are designed to carry up to 600 standees in each two-car train and with cars following each other in seconds, the KRC says between 30,000 and 10,000 passengers can be transported every hour.

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