Come June 17 and the port city of Kochi, Kerala’s financial capital, will be on a new high. With Prime Minister Narendra Modi waving the green flag, Kochi will begin a historic journey that will bring about a revolutionary change in Kerala’s public transport system.
The 25-km Kochi Metro Rail, which is estimated to entail a total investment of ₹5,182 crore, will take Kerala to the next level in public transport and set the record for being the fastest metro project travel from the policy tables to the massive serpentine skyway that now defines Kochi. Doubters there might be, but the metro is the first major attempt in Kerala’s modern history at changing the way people travel, using a modern, reliable, safe, non-polluting, economical and fast mode of mass transit.
The project was mooted 15 years ago when it became clear that private and KSRTC buses, which together transport over 50 per cent of commuters in the city, were unable to cater to the rising demand for a comfortable and convenient mode of public transport in the city. With an upper limit of 650 on the number of private city buses and diversion of KSRTC’s ‘Tirukochi’ and low-floor buses to suburban towns, commuters began to rely heavily on cars and two wheelers, choking roads in the bottlenecked city hub and the greater-Kochi area. The Kochi metro is expected to cater to 3.85 lakh commuters every day.
In the first phase to be inaugurated by the Prime Minister, the Kochi metro would cover 13 km from Aluva to Palarivattom, which in itself is the longest stretch to be commissioned at the launch of any metro project in the country. “Metro trains will cover 11 stations en route and the distance will be covered in 24 minutes. Another 5-km stretch in the Palarivattom-M.G. Road (up to Maharajas College Ground) corridor is expected to be thrown open by September, to coincide with Onam. While civil works are almost over, work on stations, third rail (to source power) and the signalling/telecommunication systems is under way in the second stretch,” said those in the know of things.
Commuters would have to pay tariff ranging from ₹10 to ₹60 for travelling in the Aluva-Pettah corridor, which has 22 stations. This works out to less than ₹3 a km. The Aluva-Palarivattom fare is ₹40. The KMRL is expected to offer 20 per cent discount to regular commuters who use ‘Kochi One,’ the pre-paid card and app that it would launch prior to the Metro's commissioning.
Delay, hiccups
It was not all smooth sailing for the project. There were the initial delays in getting clearances, followed by early bottlenecks arising from the city’s preparedness to go in for the massive infrastructure project, particularly with respect to land acquisition, and, when the project hit the ground, there were issues of integrated project execution by Kochi Metro Rail Ltd (KMRL), special purpose vehicle created for implementing the project, and the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC), consultants for the project. Thanks to the delays the cost of the Metro’s Aluva-Pettah phase one corridor had escalated from ₹2,000 crore in 2006 to ₹5,182 crore (including cost of land acquisition) when works began in 2013. This works out to approximately ₹220 crore a kilometre, including expenses of viaduct, stations, trains, coach depot and operations control centre.
The Centre was not initially keen to accord its nod for the Metro, pointing out that the city had less than 10 lakh population. However, the Metro’s proponents countered this saying that it would begin from Aluva in the suburbs, pass through M.G. Road in the city hub and end in Tripunithura — another suburban town, catering to a total of over 21 lakh people in the city’s urban spread. A huge floating population from the neighbouring districts who come to Kochi for jobs, would be in addition to this. The State government had assigned the DMRC with the task of preparing the detailed project report (DPR) for the Kochi Metro in 2004. The DPR was ready the next year. Apart from identifying the 25-km metro corridor, the report also included a comprehensive traffic and transportation survey. The work on the project could have begun in 2006 and got over by 2010 in the 25-km-long Aluva-Pettah corridor, but for the inordinate delay in getting Central nod.
From the outset, the Planning Commission was keen about implementing it as a Public-Private Partnership (PPP) project. Umpteen meetings later, DMRC’s Principal Adviser E. Sreedharan’s stand that the Metro be taken up as a Centre-State joint venture project, prevailed. He highlighted the complexities, delays and cost overrun that had hit the Hyderabad and Mumbai Metros to buttress his arguments. Former Supreme Court judge V.R. Krishna Iyer was among those who flew to New Delhi and met the then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh, seeking the Centre’s nod for the project.
KMRL comes into being
Once it was decided to implement it as a State-Centre joint venture project, the government decided to form a special purpose vehicle (SPV) called Kochi Metro Rail Ltd. (KMRL) to spearhead the works. It was also decided to opt for an elevated metro-rail system since an underground one will be almost three times costlier than an elevated corridor and the construction time would be double, while its operation and maintenance cost would be at least 50% more than an elevated system. Prior to the launch of the metro’s piling activity, the State government entrusted the DMRC with a slew of preparatory works to ensure smooth flow of traffic in the congested city even as work progressed.
The overbridge at the northern end of the city centre was pulled down and replaced with a four-lane bridge and the A.L. Jacob overbridge was built to decongest the overbridge abutting the south railway station. Though the DMRC volunteered to widen the Thammanam-Pullepady Road, doubts persisted due to the scale of land acquisition. Later, the Pachalam overbridge was built to decongest the northern parts of Kochi. A few bottlenecked parts of Banerjee Road were widened to ensure four-lane traffic, since metro pillars occupied around two metres of the road width.
Work begins
The then Prime Minister Manmohan Singh laid the metro’s foundation stone in December 2012 and the then Chief Minister Oommen Chandy launched the Metro’s construction work in June 2013, calling for completion of the the Aluva-Pettah corridor by June 2016, a year ahead of the June 2017 contractual deadline. Mr. Sreedharan readily agreed. Work began in right earnest in the same month, led by a largely migrant workforce who braved the elements and worked hard. Soon, a few labour unions began obstructing work intermittently along the metro viaduct and in girder-casting yards, demanding employment. Though the project’s main contractors — L&T and Soma Constructions — were taken by surprise, they reluctantly agreed to employ a few workers from the local community to carry out unskilled civil works. A couple of quarry and lorry strikes followed, further holding up work. Over 120 days were thus lost due to strikes.
Initial objections to acquiring land on M.G. Road and in areas like Edapally were overcome after owners were wooed with a record compensation of ₹52 lakh and ₹30 lakh respectively each cent of land on road-facing plots handed over for the project. The cost of land acquisition costs have been borne by the State government, from its 36% share of the total project outlay of ₹5,181.79 crore. Of the remaining cost, 20% is being met by the Centre and 44% through borrowing. French overseas lending agency AFD has lent to KMRL a soft loan worth of ₹1,260 crore, which has a five year moratorium and repayment period of 20 years. Canara Bank has offered a ₹1,170 crore loan to the Metro agency, which has a seven year moratorium and 13 years repayment period. Apart from bearing the cost of the Metro’s preparatory works, the State government is committed to repay a ₹477-crore loan taken from the Ernakulam District Cooperative Bank for land acquisition on the Vyttila-Pettah corridor.
Civil works are currently under way in the MG Road-Vyttila stretch. By current reckoning, it would take approximately two more years for the 7-km MG Road-Vyttila-Pettah corridor to become operational. This is primarily owing to the delay in land acquisition in the Vyttila-Pettah stretch, due to the State’s delay in framing rules based on the Centre’s new land acquisition Act. The DMRC is in the last lap of finalising a re-tender for civil works in the stretch. The metro agency is expected to execute the ₹323 crore, 2-km Tripunithura extension from Pettah. Meanwhile, the State government has given administrative sanction for the Kaloor-Kakkanad extension at an estimated outlay of ₹2,577 crore, to be built by the KMRL. The 11-km line would branch off from the main line at the Jawaharlal Nehru International Stadium at Kaloor. Up next could be an extension of the Kochi Metro to the Nedumbassery international airport. With a multi-modal transport plan, including a Kochi Water Metro Project, already in place, Kochi could present the world with an interesting model in transport planning and implementation. And, that will be only a matter of time.
John L. Paul
