Twenty-five of the total 78 ferries envisaged under the Water Metro project in the Greater Kochi area will operate on Public-Private Partnership (PPP) basis, reducing Kochi Metro Rail Limited’s burden of investing in capital to procure the vessels, KMRL managing director Loknath Behera has said.
Companies and institutions will be able to sponsor and operate the ferries on a revenue-sharing basis. The 50-passenger vessels will have a standardised design, like the rest of the thirty 50-passenger ferries that KMRL will operate. The 25 ferries that will be operated on PPP basis will be able to avail infrastructure and other amenities that are being readied. The stakeholders who sponsor them will in turn need not necessarily operate them as ferries. They can operate chartered services and charge differential fare. The income thus generated will be shared with KMRL on a revenue-sharing basis. A nationalised bank has already evinced interest in the scheme, Mr. Behera added.
The metro agency had already placed orders with the Cochin Shipyard for twenty-three 100-passenger ferries which are estimated to cost a total of ₹184 crore. The 30 other ferries that the agency has envisaged is expected to cost another ₹300 crore. The ferries under the Water Metro project will be integrated with the Kochi metro and other modes of public transport to ensure seamless commute.
Delay in first batch
The expected introduction of the first batch of five 100-passenger ferries in the High Court-Boghatty-Vypeen corridor in June (the initial deadline of December 2020 was revised following difficulty in importing spare parts during the pandemic) has, in the meantime, run into trouble, with sources in the Cochin Shipyard saying that the delivery of all the vessels could take up to July. The first vessel had been handed over to KMRL earlier this year.
The second vessel is ready to be handed over to the metro agency in another two days, while the third will roll out by the end of June. The other two will be handed over in July. The delay occurred due to reasons which included the vendor who was nominated to supply components of the accommodation part of the ferries — windows and air conditioning — being unable to do so. The shipyard, which completed the rest of the work, has in turn agreed to pay the supplier directly to speed up their supply.
On the possibility of manufacturers denying warranty cover for batteries due to delay in rolling out the vessels, sources said the warranty period could be extended, once the delivery took effect.
