Trivandrum Rising - Our city tomorrow and how we can help it develop.

Remember the High Court Bench in Trivandrum?

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 16:14:00 +0000

Does anyone remember the (still ongoing) struggle to re-establish a Permanent Bench of the High Court in Trivandrum? Yes, Trivandrum is still the only Capital of a major State not to have at least a Bench of its High Court established in the city. Yes, many (not enough, it seems) of us have been clamoring for the establishment of the Bench in the Capital for close to five years now, and that's just the latest edition of demands stretching back many a decade! No, the Bench has not been established since the honorable Justices at the Ernakulam High Court do not seem to be favorably disposed to relocating to the State Capital nor are are the hordes of lawyers and Government officials who mint money from having the Court 200 Kilometers away from the Capital in favor of having some of the moolah taken away for such trifling reasons as the public interest. After all, what does that matter?!

For over 2 years, there was a relay hunger strike in front of the District Court, to which I had the honor of chipping in with 12 hours of zero nutrition time. Twice, the State Legislature has called for the Bench which will save anywhere between Rs 50-100 Crores a year for the State Exchequer by eliminating the cost of conducting Government-related litigation, which accounts for the vast majority of cases in the High Court, in Ernakulam.

If the suspicion till May 2011 was that the reason behind the lack of any evident interest in Delhi for expediting the process was the political misalignment between the State (Left) and Central (Congress-led) Governments, even that last shred of an excuse was removed with the UDF coming to power almost a year ago. Alas, we were wrong, just as it seems we were wrong in a great many things with respect to the current power equation. Not even a peep has come out on this subject from the Secretariat's North Block.

Well, it seems that at least one person in a position of power has not forgotten or forsaken this issue. Last week, Trivandrum' MP, Dr Shashi Tharoor, introduced a Private Member's Bill 'that proposes the establishment of a Permanent Bench of the High Court of the State in any State Capital that already does not have one. The crucial element in the Bill is that the Bench may be created by the President of India if recommended by the State Legislature. It does not need the consent of the High Court, which has been the only thing holding up the creation of the Bench in Trivandrum for so many years. Since every single political party including the Congress, BJP, CPM and CPI backed the demand for the Bench, it stands to reason that all of them should support the Bill in Parliament (unless some State does not want a Bench in its Capital city!). Now, we will have a real chance to see how truthful all those eloquent promises of support really were. At least, we will know if the 20 MPs from Kerala are all on the same page with respect to that usually forgotten reason for which they were elected in the first place, the Public Interest!

Technopark - End to End!

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Sat, 21 Apr 2012 18:36:00 +0000

For all of you who want to see how big Trivandrum's technology zone has really become (in real life!) and also for the few who still haven't accepted the emergence of India's newest technology hub.........

Here is a composite of a set of amazing aerials of Technopark Phases I, II and III, shot by my buddy, Sudheesh Nair. 330 acres of IT powerhouse, with over 10 Million SF of space in operation or under construction, with over 300 companies and nearly 40,000 employees.

(Click for the full-size image, it's worth it!)

Moving the City - A Mass Transit Future for Trivandrum - Part II

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Sun, 01 Apr 2012 20:19:00 +0000

(....Cont.d)

As time progresses, with major developments like Vizhinjam and Technocity reaching their full potential and demand for public transit building up on key corridors, further monorail routes will become viable. For example, some of the existing high-capacity bus routes described earlier would need to be upgraded and integrated into a third monorail line that starts at Balaramapuram, first heads West to Vizhinjam and then runs via Kovalam-Eachakkal-T3-Kochuveli(along the Veli Road)-Veli-Aakulam-KIMS-Medical College campus-Pattom-Kowdiar-Peroorkada-Civil Station-Mananthala-Vembayam. This line will be between 35-40 Km long and cost about Rs 5500-6000 Crores. At this stage, Trivandrum's monorail network will be approximately 110 Km long and cost slightly under Rs 15,000 Crores.

Another option would be to curtail the line to Vizhinjam at one end and Vattapara at the other, which would reduce the length to about 30 Km and the cost to about Rs 4000 Crores.

At this stage, the core MRTS network by itself would provide connectivity between almost every key activity and transportation node - Technopark, Technocity, Vizhinjam, both main railway stations, Airport, ISRO, the city center and the educational centers, as well as to key catchments within the city and in the key suburbs and satellite urban area. This means that a significant portion of the expected 500,000-plus commuters in the Trivandrum metro area by 2018-20 will be have access to the system, ensuring high levels of ridership.

Rail and Water Links

While the monorail system and its associated bus services will be capable of handling commuter traffic within the core of the metro area, tens of thousands of people commute daily to and from Trivandrum from as far afield as Kollam and Nagercoil. Currently, most of them spend upwards of two hours on crowded buses and passenger/long distance train. An efficient and effective travel solution for this demand not only improves the quality of life of thousands of people but also expands the catchment of employers and educational institutions in the Trivandrum metro area to a region almost 150 Km across and with a population approaching 10 Million people. At present, the regional connectivity for this vast area consists primarily of the NH 66, the M.C.Road and the Kollam-Nagercoil mainline railway. Only low-capacity bus services operate at present on the two arterial roads and passenger/long distance trains on the rail line. The obvious solution seems to be the introduction of commuter rail services linking Kollam and Nagercoil to Trivandrum.

Commuter rail services are usually defined as a passenger rail transport service that primarily operates between a city center, and the middle to outer suburbs beyond 15 km (10 miles) and commuter towns or other locations that draw large numbers of commuters. These are generally operated on main-line rail tracks which share the right of way with cargo and long distance passenger services. They are distinct from the so-called "passenger" or "local" trains which use standard passenger coaches, in that their coaches are meant for maximum capacity, short haul uses and have dense seating arrangements/standing space and no toilets. In India, commuter rail is most popular in Mumbai, where the trains move a whopping 6.9 Million people a day, as well as in cities such as Chennai, Hyderabad and Kolkata. Kerala has long been promised the services of Mainline Electrical Multiple Units based out of sheds in Kollam and Palakkad. After hanging fire for half a dozen years, the first service started a few days ago with the grand total of two rakes, basically defeating the very purpose of having frequent commuter services. Moreover, although the service was first proposed in the Kollam-Trivandrum-Neyyatinkara stretch in 2006 and a MEMU service facility was set up in Kollam, the MEMU has now been introduced in the Palakkad-Ernakulam-Kottayam-Kollam stretch. For some reason, the Railways have introduced the services on a four-plus hour long route, for which they are grossly unsuited by basic definition, rather than on the one-hour Kollam-Trivandrum route, for which they are originally meant! I suppose logic left the building a long time ago.....

It is estimated that over 50-60,000 people commute to Trivandrum daily from Kollam and Neyyatinkara, and places in between. If the scope is extended to Nagercoil and thinking out to 2015 when a commuter rail and monorail system could be made operational, we could be looking at 100,000 people a day in either direction. With the 65 Km Kollam-Trivandrum stretch taking about 90 minutes and the 30 Km Trivandrum - Nagercoil stretch taking about 50-60 minutes, 20 rakes would be needed to maintain a 15 minute frequency during the peak periods between 6.30 AM and 8.30 AM and 4.30 PM and 6.30 PM. Off-peak frequencies can be every 30 minutes to start with. The basic reason that the MEMU has remained on paper is the desperate lack of resources with the Railways to acquire the rakes needed. 20 rakes of 6 coaches each would cost between Rs 300-360 Crores. In cities like Mumbai and Hyderabad, the State Government bears a significant part or even a majority of the acquisition cost of the rakes as well as shares in any system related expenses. With a MEMU shed already available at Kollam, the latter would probably involve minor improvements to platforms, upgradation of some of the smaller stations along the route and the establishment of a second MEMU maintenance facility, potentially at Nemom. Services on the Kollam-Trivandrum stretch should terminate at Nemom and those on the Trivandrum-Nagercoil stretch would terminate at Kochuveli, allowing the heavily congested Trivandrum Central to act only as a pass-through station with two platforms dedicated to commuter rail services. The commuter rail could interconnect with the monorail at Kaniyapuram / Kazhakkoottam (via Skywalk), Kochuveli, Trivandrum Central and Neyyatinkara (potentially via Skywalk). The Railways has completed the survey for a new line between Erumeli and Trivandrum via Pathanamthitta and Punalur. It's expected to loop to the east of the core city area and meet the North-South mainline at Nemom. Commuter rail services can be run on this line as well up to Punalur with peak frequencies of 30 minutes, requiring another 4-6 rakes. Concurrently, and working in a joint funding model, the State could work with the Railways to add a third and a fourth track to the mainline between Trivandrum and Kollam, with the two new lines capable of supporting high speed train services as previously discussed.

In short, commuter rail services will help to extend the mass transit catchment of Trivandrum all the way to Kollam and Nagercoil, and thus benefit as many as 10 Million people in and around Trivandrum, helping to create an extended metropolitan area roughly the size of Chicago. It will help to extend the metro area further and help integrate the two cities closer with the regional center of activity. These services will also significantly de-congest the NH-66 and the MC Road. Once more, the need for integrated planning becomes evident since the commuter rail system needs not just trains and tracks but effective links with other transit systems to succeed. For example, the alignment of the monorail network as well as the design of some key stations may have to be finalized keeping in view the need to maximize direct monorail-commuter rail interchanges. If the monorail and commuter rail stations are too far apart, the percentage of inter-modal use would start to fall off. With effective integration, the 100,000 or more commuters using commuter rail daily would almost all also use the monorail system to complete their journeys.

Now that we have commuter rail out of the way, let's also cast a brief glance on a less obvious but no less potentially useful form of mass transit in the Trivandrum metro area, one that uses a natural pathway - water. Kerala is well known for its water transport, having utilized its extensive system of backwater lagoons, lakes, rivers and inland waterways for hundreds of years for moving people and cargo. The Kings of Travancore were at the fore-front of water transport, and engineered water transport at that, by not-so-minor feats of construction such as the Parvathy Puthanar canal, which includes what are probably the only cargo waterway tunnels in India.

Historic Imagery of the Parvathy Puthanar canal (Source: Life Photo Archive by Google via Scorpiogenius.com)

Needless to say, this proud canal system has fallen into disuse and all the State's horses, departments and dredgers have not managed to resurrect it till now despite multiple projects intended to clean out and operationalize the canal. The bulk of the waterway development has been concentrated on the Kollam-Kottapuram stretch of the so-called National Waterway III (as in many, many Crores spent but nothing much achieved). Preciously little has been done about the Kovalam-Kollam stretch despite many an announcement in the past few years. Systematic encroachment of the canal is one major hurdle which needs to be overcome before it can accommodate traffic. This can be achieved as can be the need to dredge the length of the canal to reach an adequate operating draft, with enough effort and money, neither of which are in particularly short supply especially in view of New Delhi's interest in developing inland waterways through the Inland Waterway Authority of India. The IWAI has commissioned exhaustive research on the development of the Kollam-Kovalam stretch as well as for the Poovar - Colachel stretch (I didn't even know this existed!). Unfortunately, none of this is publicly available and little traction seems to have been achieved despite the enormous potential of the route because projects with an investment upwards of Rs 30,000 Crores - Technocity, Technopark, VSSC, Trivandrum International Airport and the Vizhinjam port - are all located along it.

The truth of the matter is that development of water transport has been lagging in part because of the absence of a clear demand pull despite frequent and loud discussions about the potential of inland cruise tourism and cargo movement. National Waterway III from Kottapuram to Kollam has seen only limited cargo movement even after being in development for over a decade and after expending hundreds of Crores. This in turn is due to the fact that neither passengers nor cargo are likely to take a different mode of transport unless there is no other alternative (as in parts of Kuttanad, for example) or (when trying to divert road/rail traffic on to water), it is significantly cheaper or faster. Water transport, as a whole, tends to be cheaper due to scale economies and the low cost of the transportation medium itself, as opposed to roads or rails which need constant maintenance. The key question is whether it would be faster. In the case of passenger transport on inland waterways, the answer is probably no considering the relative narrowness of the canals and the large number of bridges along the way (unless you have the skills and gadgets of 007 in Moonraker!). On average, canal boats could probably achieve 40 Km/hr and for select destinations like Chirayinkeezhu and Varkala town, which are closer to the canal than the NH 66, this could make sense for commuting to and from Trivandrum. The real attraction could be for cargo transport to and from Vizhinjam, although this would need significant expansion of the tunnels at Varkala.

The real potential for water transportation could lie along the coast where fast catamaran ferries can meet and beat the average speed of road/rail transport between key destinations such as Trivandrum, Varkala, Kollam and Colachel. These fast twin-hulled ships are widely used around the world to provide coastal and inland transit services, including here in Boston. Large catamaran ferries are fast, comfortable and can operate in pretty much all weather conditions. During off-peak hours and on holidays, they could be used for tourism and leisure activities, which will be a boon to the tourism sector.

Image Courtesy: My-dreamboat.com

Trivandrum has a ready-made ferry terminal already in the form of the Valiathura sea pier that was once Kerala's busiest port but has now been reduced to a dilapidated relic by decades of administrative neglect and the abject denial of the obvious fact that the pier continues to have great tourism potential. If renovated, at a relatively small cost, the sea-pier can become a world-class ferry terminal, given its natural draft and its extreme proximity to the city center, the International Airport, Kochuveli railway terminal and the NH 66. Catamarans can cruise at 70-80 Km/hr, reaching Kollam (Thankasseri port) in less than an hour from Trivandrum and can be operated on a PPP basis at costs comparable to other modes of public transit.

Roads for a Million Vehicles

While mass transit is expected to reduce the demand for private vehicles in the coming decade, there is no denying the fact that the growth in the population of cars and private vehicles is also driven by income growth, which is likely to accelerate in Trivandrum over the next decade or two. People don't buy their own vehicle just because they NEED to (because public transport is deficient) but also be cause they WANT to and CAN buy. Even in cities with excellent public transportation, each household tends to have a car or two (if they can find affordable parking at or close to their residences!) for non-work and leisure travel. Trivandrum's vehicular population has already edged north of 1 Million (it has one of the higher per capita car ownership levels among large Indian cities) and it is growing at almost 70-80,000 vehicles per year. And this does not take into account the thousands of out-of-district and out-of-State vehicles brought in by the folks who come to work at Trivandrum (at Technopark, ISRO and so on) from elsewhere, or the thousands of cargo vehicles that come into the city every day from all across the country. The fact that the city's road network, including the newly completed TCRIP roads, are getting overwhelmed is painfully apparent for those driving around in Trivandrum and needs no further scientific proof. Even with the proposed mass transit systems, there needs to be a lot of road infrastructure development, not only to meet the needs of a modern metropolis but also to catch up with decades of lagging investment. Oh yes, let's not forget the tens of thousands of multi-axle trucks added on to the roads when the 6 Million container a year transshipment terminal at Vizhinjam comes online (even if 20% of the containers come in and out, we would be adding up to 4000 trucks a day to the city's traffic!)

At the top of the list is the NH 66 from Kazhakkoottam to Karode, whose four-laning has been delayed for various reasons - mostly the lack of political will - for over a decade now, even as the road itself exceeds the traffic threshold for six-laning! With Technocity, Technopark, VSSC, multiple industrial parks, the International Airport, Kochuveli rail terminal, Kovalam and Vizhinjam port all located along a 30 Km stretch of the road, it is by far the most critical piece of pending road development in Kerala. Fortunately, at long last, the project is moving forward with land acquisition for the part of the road not already acquired having commenced a few days ago. Dr Shashi Tharoor played a crucial role in persuading the Ministry of Highways to proceed with the strategic road even as other stretches of NH 66 continue to be plagued by the "45 m-or-not-45 m" debate. Work on expanding the desperately congested road to four-lanes is expected to begin later this year at a cost of Rs 800 Crores. One hopes that saner minds at NHAI will sanction a concurrent six-laning because the Kazhakkoottam-Vizhinjam stretch has already breached the traffic volumes that call for it. Next in line is the widening of the equally grid-locked Karamana-Kaliyakavila road, the old alignment of the NH 66. This is currently at the mercy of the State Government, the previous edition of which had proposed a Rs 640 Crore project, but the current administration has not yet allotted even the funds needed for acquiring the land for the project (the Center had earlier sanctioned some funds). The project is facing the usual alignment and land acquisition protests but should be completed with the highest priority. Despite a skimpy 30.2 m width, there is the chance that it could be developed with 6 lanes and should definitely be built according to international standards like the TCRIP roads. Finally, to close out the list of priority regional roads are the MC Road and the proposed Outer Ring Road (ORR). The former has already received a healthy make-over under KSTP but needs to be widened to a full 4-lanes at least till Anchal/Punalur before development solidifies on either side. The latter was proposed under Phase VII of the National Highway Development Program and although NHAI called for consultants to prepare a detailed report, nothing has been heard of it since. This needs to be immediately pulled out of cold storage and put into construction, since land acquisition will progressively get more difficult as the Eastern fringes of the city get more densely populated. Running from Attingal/Kaniyapuram to Venjarammoodu to Nedumangad to Malayinkeezhu and then terminating at Neyyatinkara, the ORR would be upwards of 60 Km long and cost upwards of Rs 1200 Crores. Together with mass transit lines proposed earlier in the article, this road would help speed up the development of these areas and make the city's rapid growth more equitable and efficient.

Between the mass transit system, the NH 66, the MC Road and the ORR, most of the main traffic axes are covered but these need to be supported by an efficient system of secondary corridors - most likely roads with high-capacity bus services. While TCRIP has helped establish an effective set of roads within the Corporation area, the same needs to be replicated on a metropolitan area-wide basis. Roads like Sasthamangalam - Vattiyoorkavu - Aruvikkara - Peyad, Peroorkada - Karakulam - Nedumangad - Vithura, Peroorkada - Civil Station - Mananthala - Sreekariyam, Kovalam - Vizhinjam - Poovar and so on need to be developed concurrently to 4/6 lane widths (not 2/3 lanes as many TCRIP roads were, only to be found wanting as soon as they were ready). Many of these would need to be widened before monorail lines are built along their medians. Inner city roads like Medical College - Kumarapuram - Nalumukke, Paruthipara - Muttada - Ambalamukke, Sasthamangalam - Pangode - Jagathy - Thampanoor, PMG - Pottakuzhi and so on also need to be developed to 4-lane width with medians, automatic signals, bus-bays, paved sidewalks and streetlights. Some of these have found mention in the current State Budget. A total of about 60 Km of roads that could cost about Rs 300 Crores. Equally importantly, all major secondary and tertiary city roads (read, 2 lanes and up) need to be fitted with sodium vapor lighting - starting with the 6-lane Kesavadasapuram-Pattom and Vellayambalam-Thycaud stretches which inexplicably continue to languish in darkness over a decade after being widened.

Then there is always that usual member of road wish-lists put together by citizens' organizations in Trivandrum, the Kottur/Kallar - Ambasamudram Eastern highway assumes significance as it can reduce the distance to Tirunelveli and the vital NH-7 by over 70 Km. This will help to improve access from Central and Southwestern Tamilnadu to Vizhinjam when the deep-water port opens, helping to expand the hinterland that the port can make use of.

More wide roads mean more traffic, volume-wise and complexity-wise. This calls for better designed intersections and more effective grade-separation. While it took several years for Kerala's first grade separator to be built in Trivandrum, it will be the first of many. Junctions like Kazhakkoottam, Technopark, Anamugham, Chackai, Eanchakkal, Pattom, Kesavadasapuram, Peroorkada, Mananthala, Vellayambalam, Killipalam, Balaramapuram and Kovalam have either already exceeded or will soon exceed the threshold traffic for the use of grade-separators as opposed to signals. Many of these need to be planned along with the monorail system so that there is no conflict later as in the case of the elevated approach road to the New International Terminal which now clashes with the widening of the NH-66.

Where will the money come from?

Whew! That was a lot of infrastructure development that we talked about, it's time we put a number to all those ideas and the whole concept of a metropolitan transportation plan and system. A Rupee number, of course.

Monorail Line I (Phase I + II) : Rs 5500 Crores

Monorail Line 2 : Rs 3000 Crores

Monorail Line 3 : Rs 6000 Crores

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Monorail Total : Rs 14500 Crores

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Commuter Rail (rolling stock): Rs 600 Crores

New Rail Lines - State's Share: Rs 500 Crores

Catamaran Ferries (PPP) : Rs 300 Crores

Purchase of 500 LF buses : Rs 200 Crores

Outer Ring Road : Rs 1200 Crores

Arterial Road Improvement : Rs 1000 Crores

Feeder Road Improvements : Rs 500 Crores

Construction of 12 flyovers : Rs 400 Crores

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Grand Total : Rs 19200 Crores

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That's a lot, even though it pales in comparison with State's current champion white elephant, the Rs 160,000 Crore Trivandrum - Kasargode bullet train system. Moreover, this cost should be compared to the total life-time economic benefit that it will facilitate. Projects like Vizhinjam, Technopark expansion and Technocity bring in direct and indirect investments totaling over Rs 30,000 Crores and will help generate over 150,000 direct high end jobs in the coming years. Over a 30 year operating period, these projects will generate over Rs 200,000 Crores of direct economic benefit. However, without world-class infrastructure, such world-class projects can operate in an optimal fashion. This means that the investment in infrastructure is a direct input to the economic future of Trivandrum, Kerala and India (Vizhinjam, for example, brings competitive advantages to the entire country's economy). On the other hand, even if the transportation system saves 10 minutes a day in travel time for the estimated 500,000 commuters who will use it daily, that is nearly 10 man-years saved each and every day. A mere Rs 10 saving per day per person in travel costs results in Rs 200 Crores of savings a year. Unlike the proposed budget-breaking investment in bullet trains which may (or may not) benefit a small section of society and will have little or no direct economic benefits, the metropolitan transportation system benefits an entire population (500,000 people a day Vs a few thousand) and adds economic capacity in both promoting mass employment (by reducing the cost of employment that includes commuting costs) and by creating significant incremental cargo capacity (by de-congesting roads and adding new infrastructure).

It's obvious that the State or the city alone cannot pay for the entire investment upfront. Nor would New Delhi shoulder more than a share of the burden. The funding has to be innovative, tapping as many sources as possible and providing incentives to ensure efficient and effective use of the funds. Splitting up the projects and seeking individual funding sources is not only inefficient but is also likely to see just a few projects finding the money with the majority left high and dry. A far smarter strategy would be to bundle up as many projects as possible into an integrated plan and to seek funding for the sum as opposed to each of the parts. This strategy has been successfully followed for initiatives like the Mumbai Urban Transport Project, which is 45% funded by the World Bank. The latter is now placing a high degree of emphasis on urban development as it has realized that cities will be the key drivers of socioeconomic development in the 21st Century. Moreover, it is a multi-lateral development finance institution (DFI) and unlike JICA, will not insist on restrictive sourcing requirements for the projects it funds. Another option is the ADB, which, like the World Bank, already has experience funding urban development projects in Kerala. Since the monorail project needs to approach a DFI and the Central Government for funding its Rs 5500 Crore cost, it may be prudent to roll supplementary projects such as the road improvements and the first commuter rail services into it and seek funding for an integrated Rs 7000 Crore project. As a complete metropolitan development proposal, a much stronger case can be made for DFI funding. Another source of funds would be JNNURM 2.0, perhaps making up for our disastrous performance in getting funds from the first edition. Other than the 65% that would be cumulatively funded by the DFI and Govt. of India, the State can raise its share from some of the following sources:

A) User Fees - Fares on each of the various transportation systems can be maximized with respect to what the market will support. For example, monorail fares can be bench-marked to a level between ordinary bus fares and Volvo fares. Commuter rail fares can be bench-marked to be lower than the comparable local passenger train tickets.

B) Public Private Partnership - While it is unlikely that a pure BOT model will be viable in light of the high capital costs and the constraints on fee-based recovery, a version of the landlord model being used at Vizhinjam could bring in an efficient private sector operator that can maximize revenues from the transit system and pay back the operating costs as well as help the State meet the cost of capital through a revenue share.

C) Tax-based Recovery - In initiatives, such as the development of mass transit systems, where the projects will create incremental economic development, some of this activity can be channeled through appropriate taxes and cesses back into funding the projects up front.

Let's assume that a monorail line will promote new business parks that make Rs 10,000 Crores of new IT exports. At a taxation rate of 10%, this brings back Rs 1000 Crores to the Government. If we attribute 50% of this back to financing the monorail line, the contribution can help meet the debt service for a loan of Rs 5000 Crores over a 10 year period. This principle, called Tax Increment Financing(because it raises funds on the assumption that the project so financed would more or less directly increase tax incomes) is widely used in the US to finance urban infrastructure projects. A direct application would be to boost the Floor Area Ratios (FARs) for real estate development along monorail routes and around stations, and to charge a fee for the additional FAR. A fee of Rs 100/SF would be minor compared to the revenue/SF but would bring significant benefits to the developer in terms of access to its project. Over the built-up area envisaged in Technocity alone, this would yield Rs 600 Crores up-front. Additionally, real estate taxes on buildings along mass transit routes can be higher since these buildings tend to get higher rents than ones further away. These taxes are an annual income stream that can help finance the transport projects.

D) Transit-Oriented Development - involves enabling high-density, mixed use, sustainable real estate development very close to mass transit stations. Real estate developers would pay up-front premiums or an annual lease for the space, which would help fund the system. However, this may be difficult in densely built-up parts of the inner city where land near stations is already developed. That said, stations on the fringes of the urban core like Pallipuram, Kaniyapuram, Nedumangad, Vembayam and so on are more suited for TOD in terms of availability of land.

It is evident that putting together the funding for such a complex and capital-intensive initiative, let alone managing a massive project that will span 10-15 years and involve hundreds - if not thousands - of contracts, very sophisticated planning, maddening conflicts with existing infrastructure and with land-owners and so many things that cannot even be imagined right now is far beyond the capabilities of the motley crew of agencies that exist today. A MTA is the only solution, firstly to bring all the stake-holders under the same umbrella and then to build the competencies needed to manage the project and to put the money together.

That's the very first step towards a world-class future for our favorite metro. As far as I know, very few Indian cities, perhaps with the exception of select metros such as Mumbai, have fully integrated transportation agencies. If Trivandrum can lead the way in establishing an MTA and an integrated metropolitan transportation project, there is no reason that it cannot be a true differentiator that sets Trivandrum apart from the dozen or so Tier II cities jostling to graduate into the big league. In private discussions with the senior management at several leading global firms looking at Trivandrum as an investment destination, this has been the single major lacuna identified in the city. No reason that transportation could not become our trump card, when it is the pain-point for the likes of Mumbai and Bangalore (no wonder that they are splurging tens of thousands of Crores on it!) and when Trivandrum's evident strengths - such as its world-class human resources, intellectual capital and strategic location - already give it an edge. As much as it seems like a challenge worthy of Hercules himself, it is also a massive opportunity. Let's get cracking!

Moving the City - A Mass Transit Future for Trivandrum

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Sun, 25 Mar 2012 06:32:00 +0000

As Trivandrum witnesses unprecedented growth and investments of over $4 Billion are underway in transportation infrastructure in and around the city, it is high time to ask whether we have a metropolitan transportation strategy for Kerala's Capital?

A Growing Metropolis

Trivandrum has been a Capital city and a center of economic activity and culture for a long time now but in the past few decades, the city's growth has accelerated rapidly as it established itself first as a center of education and research and then as one of India's top information technology hubs. Today, it's one of India's most vibrant and most affluent cities, poised to make the transition from Tier II to Tier I in the next few years, powered by rapidly expanding sectors such as the technology industry and the logistics industry that will be spawned by the upcoming $2 Billion Vizhinjam deep-water port.

Trivandrum is the largest city in Kerala, with a Corporation comprised of 100 wards and the only one large enough to qualify to be a metropolitan area on its own. The larger Metropolitan Area around the core city has expanded to include most parts of the district, from Attingal in the North to Neyyatinkara 45 Km to the South and as far inland as Nedumangad which lies about 20 Km from the Arabian Sea.

As an economic engine, Trivandrum attracts people from across Kerala, India and the world. However, daily commuters tend to come from areas as North as Kollam, a city with a million people of its own, and as far as South as Nagercoil, on the other side of the State line. This is in fact, the true metropolitan catchment of Trivandrum, at least as far as the transportation perspective is concerned.

With an estimated 500,000 daily commuters likely to be traveling around within the metro area by 2018, a metropolitan level transportation plan is long overdue. This is no surprise, shocking as it may seem at first glance, because the metro still has no comprehensive urban Master Plan, although there finally seem to be some stirrings in that direction. The definition of a metro transportation is simple as it is significant in a strategic sense - it is a comprehensive, multimodal “blueprint” for transportation systems and services aimed at meeting the mobility needs of the metropolitan area into the near future, according to the North Central Texas Council of Governors. The plan intends to ensure that transportation services and systems are adequate to support the economic development of the metro area and to provide a high quality of life for its residents at the most optimal total cost. There have been bits and pieces of transportation projects and plans in the recent past, most notably KSTP, TCRIP, JNNURM and the development of regional roads and the National Highway under various State and Central schemes. Add to that a myriad agencies - State and Central Governments, the Trivandrum Corporation, TRIDA, NATPAC, the Indian Railways and so on - that tend not to work well with each other or even be interested in doing so. At best, their efforts create a chaotic transportation scenario, at worst a completely dysfunctional one. The abject failure of the past makes it the need for an integrated transportation plan even more stark as well as the need for a Metropolitan Transportation Authority/Agency (MTA), not only to coordinate the plan but to take over, implement and operate most, if not all, of its constituent systems and services. A single agency is better able to fund and manage diverse systems and in the end, there is a single point of responsibility to work with (or to blame!).

The Network

The key arterial road in the Trivandrum metro area is the North-South NH 66 (formerly the NH 47). Its old alignment, through the center of the city forms the arterial M.G. Road while its current alignment along the coast connects all the main development nodes of the metro area including its technology super-cluster, the main ISRO campus, Kochuveli railway station, the International Airport and the giant deep-water port before heading South towards Tamil Nadu.

Map Courtesy: Mapsofindia.com

Another arterial North-South road is the MC Road which runs down the middle of the coastal plain from Central Kerala to Trivandrum and merges with the old alignment of the NH 66 as it enters the city core. Several major roads criss-cross the city and its suburbs, connecting major nodes to the city center and to each other. There is a double-track rail line that roughly parallels the old NH 66 alignment although there are no true commuter/suburban services on it yet.

A comprehensive transportation plan is both a consequence of and a determinant of the metro area's urban plan because its routes are decided based on how populations and activities are distributed at present and in the future, while these routes can help determine which areas attract businesses and residents in the future. A true chicken-and-egg scenario. In this sense, the planning exercise has to start with identifying the current pattern of sources and destinations of traffic as well as the projection of the pattern into the foreseeable future. While a true plan process is an extremely complex, multi-stage proceeding involving everything from opinion surveys to computerized travel pattern modeling, let's try and go through a simplified version here.

First of all, there are three primary types of nodes that need to be understood and incorporated into the plan in order to accommodate current and future travel demand.

A) Activity Centers: Locations that have some form of economic activity to and from which large numbers of people commute on a regular basis.

Eg: Technopark, Technocity, Secretariat, Vikas Bhavan office cluster, ISRO main campus, Kerala University Karyavattom Campus, Medical College hospital cluster, M.G. Road high street retail etc.

B) Traffic Sources / Catchments: Locations where commuters reside or portals through which people arrive into or leave the metropolitan region.

Eg: NH Bypass, Kowdiar - Sasthamangalam - Vazhuthacaud, Poojapura - Jagathy, Karamana - Eest Fort - Attukal - Kaimanam, Nedumangad, Neyyatinkara, Vattapara - Vembayam-Venjaramoodu, Attingal, Central Railway Station, Kochuveli, Trivandrum International Airport etc

C) Future Development Zones: Locations with potential for development, with wide availability of developable land and proximity to current activity hubs.

Eg: Outer ring from Attingal to Neyyatinkara via Vembayam, Nedumangad and Malayinkeezhu, Vizhinjam - Poovar, Karakulam, Vithura etc

Nodes in the first two categories already see significant traffic of commuters as they move to and from the locations of their primary engagement - workplaces, educational institutions and retail. Thus, the interconnection of these nodes assumes first priority both from the perspective of catering to the maximum existing demand as well as that of maximizing the ridership and thus the viability of any transportation system. The last set of nodes is where relatively inexpensive land is available for development if adequate access is provided to reach critical nodes such as work places, transportation centers and retail. These will see significant commercial and residential development as soon as access is available. For example, a well designed mass transit system can bring relatively undeveloped areas such as the eastern or southern fringes of the metro area within 30 minutes of employment hubs such as Technopark-Technocity. The transportation plan can play an important role in ensuring that development is radial, instead of stretching out in either direction along the NH-66, for example, and thus minimize urban sprawl which is a wasteful form of growth. Conversely, improper planning, such as the auto-oriented plans seen in the past in many US cities can promote sprawl.

Once the sources and destinations are identified, the next task is to estimate the traffic demand between various such pairs and the preferences of various segments of travelers such as their need for speed (no, not the game!) and their willingness to pay for various levels of service. Another key input could be the urban Master Plan for the metro area to estimate future demand patterns. All of these inputs, usually very complex and voluminous, are fed into a sophisticated modeling program such as TransCAD.The results can be interpreted to identify key transportation corridors. Then, based on parameters such as capacity, cost, topography and so on, the best choice of technology can be chosen for each corridor - from the simplest interventions such as road improvements to the most complex ones such as mass transit systems.

Or we could skip all this and pick one technology out of a hat (or any convenient tin which happens to be lying around). This seems to be what is going on in Kerala and much of India today. Kerala has a few white elephants running amok but precious few bottom-up transportation studies.

Mass Transit for Trivandrum

In all its wisdom, the Government has decided on a monorail-based mass transit system in Trivandrum and even hit upon a route before the transportation study was even commissioned! At various points in time, rail-based solutions and Bus Rapid Transit did the rounds, the latter even got in-principle Cabinet clearance in 2009 and then vanished into thin air. So monorail it is, which may not be the worst choice for a city of Trivandrum's size given its capacity, capital and operating cost characteristics and its relative unobtrusiveness (compared to the bulkier rail-based systems). Of course, if we had unlimited resources as some misguided folks who believe in the religion of the white elephant (...I am not referring to Thailand) seem to think, Trivandrum should have a fully underground system but it would probably be too expensive and far more than what the city needs in the foreseeable future. Perhaps, the monorail could be underground for its stretch within the core city?

As currently proposed, the monorail system will have one route running for 42 Km between Technocity and Neyyatinkara and will be developed in two phases (Technocity to Thampanoor being the first phase) at a total cost of Rs 5500 Crores. It is expected to be operational by early 2016.

This alignment connects a number of key nodes including Technocity, Technopark Phase I, Kerala University, the city center, the rail and bus terminals at Thampanoor and the key suburbs of Balaramapuram and Neyyatinkara. However, it misses out key nodes such as Technopark Phase II & III, Aakulam, Kochuveli rail terminal, the International Airport and Kovalam-Vizhinjam being the notable ones. This could be easily fixed by aligning the system along the NH-66 (the new one) between Kazhakkoottam and Aakulam (the current proposal along the old NH-66 between Karyavattom and Ulloor has very few, if any, significant nodes along the way) and perhaps this will be given serious consideration when the Detailed Project Report is prepared. NATPAC, which prepared the proposal does not seem to have looked at the broader context beyond the one route (because it was not in their mandate?), except for recommending the inclusion of feeder bus services using low-floor AC buses in the project. Multi-level Car Parks (MLCPs) have been proposed at select stations to create facilities for a Park-and-Ride mode of travel that will help attract commuters from outlying areas while at least one sky-walk has been proposed, at Thampanoor, to enhance pedestrian connectivity between the monorail and the railway station and East Fort.

Awesome artist's impression of the Trivandrum monorail by Raj Kumar at SSC Tvm

A second route could developed starting at Kazhakkoottam, running along the NH 66 - connecting Technopark Phase II & III, ISRO, Aakulam and the Kochuveli rail terminus - till Chackai (and the Airport) before heading East to Palayam and then, via Vellayambalam and Peroorkada, to Nedumangad (which also hosts ISRO facilities, the IISST and the IISER). This route would span approximately 25 Km and cost another Rs 3000 Crores. Together, these two routes would link up almost every important node except for Vizhinjam-Kovalam.

High capacity bus services (either with or without segregated right of ways) could help compliment the monorail system, running along a ring route starting from Kaniyapuram, via Vembayam, Nedumangad and Malyinkeezhu, to Balaramapuram as well as along the NH 66 between Vizhinjam and the Airport. These would ideally utilize low-floor, AC, articulated buses that could provide high levels of service along the corridors and help open up the suburbs to development even without direct monorail connectivity.

A number of feeder bus routes have been proposed along with the current monorail route. Both these and the high-capacity buses mentioned above needed to be integrated closely with the monorail system, both in terms of schedules and ticketing. This is yet another reason for having a single MTA to operate all these services. Another reason is that to entrust any of the bus services to KSRTC is to invite certain disaster, in view of their "inglourious" exploits with any new bus system, the latest of which is the gross mishandling of the 280 buses gifted to them under the JNNURM scheme. There are going to be a lot of people kicking and screaming about the creation of a MTA and the surgical removal of the KSRTC's single biggest and most lucrative operation - Trivandrum's city services.

As currently proposed by NATPAC, almost every feeder route runs from a monorail station to an outlying point. For example, Mangalapuram - Attingal and Sreekaryam - Kulathoor - VSSC. These hub-and-spoke services make sense for connecting monorail stations to faraway points, it makes better sense to connect closer points to the monorail using loop services which originate at one station and terminate at another. Let's take Kazhakkoottam - Technopark Phase III - CET - Sreekaryam. Someone from TP III wishing to travel to Attingal can take a bus heading to Kazhakkoottam instead of taking one to Sreekaryam and then doubling back to Kazhakkoottam as they would have to with a hub-and-spoke option. The MTA should take over all city bus services to ensure integration with the mass transit system and its feeders, converting all the routes first to low-floor buses and then to AC vehicles. You may ask why all that cost? The incremental cost of AC buses (a smart choice would be to add AC packs to the non-AC, low-floor buses) would probably be more than offset by the added ridership of private vehicle users being converted to public transport due to the increased comfort and levels of service of the new buses. Eventually, to really wean people away from their own two and four wheelers, they have to be offered similar comfort and flexibility, at a lesser cost.

(To Be Concluded.....)

Infosys's Back....at Technocity

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Tue, 28 Feb 2012 04:11:00 +0000

Even as work progresses on its massive 10,000 seat, 1.5 Million SF campus at Technopark Phase II, Indian IT giant Infosys has approached the Government for upwards of 50 acres of land at Technocity to set up a second sprawling facility in Trivandrum, possibly making Kerala's IT hub its biggest operation across the world. Earlier TCS had acquired 82 acres of land at Technocity for a Rs 1500 Crore, 15,000 seat Global Training Center campus.

Things are hotting up at Kerala's biggest IT infrastructure project!

Technopark Phase III nears completion

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Sat, 18 Feb 2012 17:51:00 +0000

We were first stunned by the amazing design of Technopark Phase III in 2008 and since construction began in late 2010 we have been following the progress of the massive 1 Million SF first phase of this project.

Now, the imposing structure is almost ready to welcome a long waiting list of tenants including global giants like Oracle, Cap Gemini and Accenture.

All the above pictures were shot by my friend Vivek. Full credit and thanks to him!

It has already aroused the interest of movie makers and has already landed at least one role thus far with many more to come, I am sure.

You can catch a glimpse at 1.09 in the video below.

Another Bid for Vizhinjam + Mad Ideas Prosper!

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Wed, 15 Feb 2012 05:56:00 +0000

In the last couple of weeks, there has been a frenzy of activity in Trivandrum over a handful of infrastructure projects that could theoretically add up to over Rs 1,30,000 Crores of investment. Ordinarily, this would be mind-blowing news for a State whose cumulative infrastructure investment in the past 62 years may be less than this figure.Unfortunately, except for one notable exception, the enthusiastic activity has been for the benefit of fantasy projects whose probable outcome will be at best, intense embarrassment, and at worst, a State bankruptcy!

The notable exception is of course the Rs 8000 Crore Vizhinjam deep water port project which received a viable operations after the financial bid submitted by the Leighton Welspun consortium was finally opened by VISL on February 6th after months of procrastination. Leighton has promised to invest Rs 1100 Crores in the superstructure of the port (terminal equipment such as super post panamax quay and gantry cranes) in return for an operating grant of Rs 480 Crores over the first 16 years of their 30 year operations period. Considering the pessimistic market study supplied by the project consultants to the bidders, it's a miracle that the consortium didn't ask for much, much more. A previous article on this blog had detailed the ways in which the consultants either grossly underestimated or missed out major potential revenue streams or worded their evaluation to make the project seem as unattractive as possible. A neutral observer may be forgiven for wondering whether the multi-Crore fee paid to these project consultants was to promote the project or deep-six it. And that too when white elephants are running amok across Kerala, fueled by flights of fancy packaged as "feasibility studies"!

One would expect that the Government would quickly call Leighton Welspun for discussions in order to see whether a better offer can be received, which is a standard response in the case of single bids such as this. After all this is Kerala's single most important infrastructure projects (proponents of bullet trains kindly excuse!) and we have been waiting with bated breath for the past two years just for this moment. Here's one of the world's leading construction and infrastructure firms (one of only two firms in the top qualification bracket for NHAI contracts) bidding for the right to operate the project with the Government on the verge of raising and investing Rs 3040 Crores drawn from bonds, banks, financial institutions and its own budget into the port's basic infrastructure. However, a week after the bid was opened no such discussion has yet transpired and one now hears ominous suggestions that the bid may be cancelled because of the grant that the bidder has asked for. This is the same Government which just handed out a Rs 300 Crore contract without a tender just one week previously. That persistent suspicion that Vizhinjam seems to lie in a neighboring State or country as far as the current occupants of North Block in the Secretariat are concerned continues to build. Apparently, there is some prevailing wisdom doing the rounds in the Secretariat that operators will come running in droves AFTER everything is built.

Now, you may wonder whether our Government is balking because it wants to play it safe and be financially conservative. Au contraire, the gentlemen that we elected to run our State are going from strength to strength in approving wild proposals in record time. To start with, they approved the "pod car" project in Trivandrum in just about one week flat (wow, that's quick thinking!), despite trifling issues such as the fact that it has about 5% of the capacity of the competing monorail system but costs about 50% as much and has only been deployed thus far at Heathrow Airport to shuttle passengers between the parking lots and one of the terminals! Now this latest creation of INKEL threatens to disrupt the monorail project by muscling in on its route from East Fort to LMS. One only hopes that saner heads will prevail upon the powers-that-be and instead deploy this technology as an intra-campus mobility tool for the sprawling 330 acre campus of Technopark which will soon be abuzz with 60,000 techies.

But the cute little pod-car pales in insignificance when compared to the other project that the Cabinet has waved the green flag for. This is the Rs 1,20,000 Crore High Speed Rail project connecting Trivandrum with Mangalore, that the State has just approved and even pitched to the Center. Even the most optimistic estimates show the State having to pitch in with as much as Rs 2500 Crores each year (not to mention an initial investment of Rs 15,000 Crores over the first five years!) to keep this white whale running. Compare this to the Rs 3000 Crores of capital expenditure and annual subsidy of Rs 30 Crores (no, I didn't miss any zeros) needed for Vizhinjam. There are far more pragmatic solutions to the need for high speed transport, which can provide both passenger and freight transport at 1/8 the cost. Even the Japanese, who are supposed to both fund the project as well as provide their Shinkansen bullet trains to run on the tracks, have started to push for high speed freight lines over passenger services. Apparently, they understand the meaning of the words "feasibility" and "demand" much better.

One 25-slide presentation, duly spiced up with pictures of Japan and Japanese bullet trains and sprinkled with fanciful numbers got the Cabinet to approve this ludicrous waste of money while the same folks scratch their heads over Vizhinjam on and on....and on. I wouldn't want to generalize but it seems that the speed with which a project is approved in the current regime seems to be inversely proportional to the feasibility of the project.

Corollary: The wilder the idea, the faster it gets approved!

Post Publication Note: A friend of mine had this interesting observation on the above - the more infeasible and wild the project, the more intense the lobbying and spin doctoring by vested interests who support it and stand to gain from it. This may explain why such projects tend to get pushed along in the system. Interesting thought, thanks Murali!

Sadly, this bodes ill for Vizhinjam because its feasibility has been cast iron over the last 60 years and continues to grow as bigger and bigger container ships are put into service. The Government needs to jettison such ideas that the construction for the project can go ahead without an operator, who will also do the marketing for the project. The operator is needed to provide critical inputs for the project's design, to secure shipping lines to operate at the terminal, to expedite remaining approvals and to speed up the execution of additional components such as the proposed shipyard and possible energy hub at the port. Knowing the enviable track record of project execution amongst Government agencies, it would be disastrous not to have a private entity with a strong vested interest involved right from the start.

Moreover, by the time the construction of Phase I is completed in 2015, a changed economic scenario could make it even more difficult to identify an operator. VISL and the Government need to call the bidder to the discussion table and impress upon them the potential of the project over and above the rather lukewarm market report. For example, CSL seems all set to become an anchor tenant with a VLCC class shipyard while there is also the strong potential for an energy import facility to bring in LNG or coal from sources along the Indian Ocean rim for a captive power plant or for onward distribution. With its strong presence in Australia and the Middle East, Leighton is well placed to tap into the energy import business while the Welspun Group already has an energy business as well as relationships with some of the world's top energy companies. Additionally, the consortium could look to bag the massive EPC contract for the port and then leverage its scale of operations at Vizhinjam to bid for some of the other major projects coming up in and around Trivandrum such as the widening of the NH 66 and the Trivandrum Monorail project.

If the Government is able to lay the facts down the bidder may be persuaded to modify their bid to offer better terms. A neutral bid (no subsidy) would persuade our Sreedharan acolytes in the Secretariat that the public who didn't dare question various other shady deals will not revolt over the award of the Vizhinjam bid either! In the end, that may be the most realistic win-win we should hope for. If, the powers-that-be find some time off from listening to pitches for assorted mad projects.

Fingers crossed for the next few weeks! In the meantime, watch this emotional appeal for Vizhinjam from a great man of our times! (Start at 4.10 in the video). If only our rulers had a tenth of the sense that he has......(also note the expression on the face of an Honorable Union Minister sitting nearby at the time)

A Golden Goose and Two White Elephants

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Wed, 25 Jan 2012 04:39:00 +0000

Over the last few months, the newly elected State Government has pursued a policy of abject neglect of vital projects like the $ 2 Billion Vizhinjam deep water port, while focusing on sure-fire financial disasters such as the proposed mass transit system in Ernakulam and a catastrophically expensive bullet train line.

A Happy New Year everyone and hopefully 2012 will not be as much drought-prone in terms of articles as 2011 was, since I have finally completed my work at MIT. I know that the traditional year-end wrap up and the look-ahead articles are still woefully pending but those should be posted in the next few days, hopefully!

Although I am in the midst of wrapping things up here at MIT and moving to a new apartment in Cambridge, there is this one issue that I felt couldn't wait much longer.

Scanning through the Kerala media of late, one would be forgiven for thinking that the State's single large infrastructure project has vanished off the face of the planet. It finds no mention in the news of recent weeks, which have tended to be dominated in equal measure by old men demanding monopoly rights to play with their toy trains and even older dams that threatened to unleash disaster but very evidently didn't. It has been fully six months since the financial bids for the $ 2 Billion Vizhinjam deep water port were received. Since then, the bids submitted by Indian port giant, Adani Ports, and the consortium of Indian conglomerate Welspun and Australian construction giant, Leighton, have been gathering dust, probably in some back drawer at the office of the nodal agency, VISL. Why? Because, everyone has been sitting around, sipping chai and munching biskoots, till due clearances were received from the Union Ministries of External Affairs, Defence and Home. The Defence Ministry's clearance was received on November 15th while the Ministry of External Affairs gave its nod to Leighton on December 8.Ever since the start, it was evident to everyone, except the powers-that-be in the Secretariat, that Mundra would flunk the Home Ministry for whatever reason, because they have flunked every single time they were examined in the last year or so, on no less than four separate occasions. Despite this, the State Government chose not to pressure the Home Ministry to speed things up, perhaps nervous about the inevitable outcome, and waited till January 3, when the latter let the axe finally drop on Adani, leaving the Welspun-Leighton consortium as the lone bidder for the project. Despite clear precedents existing for single bids being successfully awarded in ports and other major infrastructure projects and the requisite mechanism being included in the bid documents, the Government has refused to take a decision on awarding the bid even though three weeks have elapsed since things were made very easy for them. Although it was announced that a decision would be made in the Cabinet meeting on the 11th of January, nothing transpired - except more chai and biskoots!

And so, the current Government's sordid attitude towards the one project that could change the future economic trajectory of the State continues. When the Government recently, convened a much-trumpeted seminar to discuss infrastructure, it named four "priority projects". Shockingly, Vizhinjam didn't make that list. Surprise, surprise! It seems that land acquisition for the project has also ground to a halt since the change of Government while no progress has been made in tying up the funding needed for developing the infrastructure in the current "landlord" model of development. Whereas, the State has been very willing to take its begging bowl to international funding agencies like the Japanese International Cooperation Agency (JICA), the ADB or the World Bank for other projects, it has instead opted to take its most important infrastructure project to the commercial banks which is a much more expensive and risky proposition. Admittedly, this was first proposed by the previous Government, but then they are historically wary of international development finance institutions. And despite making a lot of noise about awarding the construction tender in March (yes, really, less than two months from now!), it is not even clear whether the project consultant for the construction aspect of the port, AECOM, has visited the site yet. All in all, one suspects that precious little has happened while the powers-that-be have focused their attention on the more "important" projects (I wonder whether India's deepest port even makes the Top 10?!). And to add insult to injury, the Ports Minister has been desperately trying to divert a proposed ship repair and building yard that Cochin Shipyard Limited wants to locate at Vizhinjam because of its deep draft, proximity to shipping lanes and the port itself, to Azhikkal which has none of these attributes. Fortunately, opposition from quarters ranging from the local Panchayat to MP Dr Shashi Tharoor, together with the the project proponent's inevitable realization that only Vizhinjam or its immediate neighbor Poovar would be suitable seem to have thrown a permanent spanner in this machination (or so we hope! A report on the final location of the yard which was supposed to have been released by November 30 has not seen the light of day yet.). In short, from the prevailing attitude and interest, Vizhinjam may be mistaken for a project in a neighboring State, if not across the border in Pakistan! Seems like this is one golden goose that nobody can see for what it can offer....sigh!

Now, we can't say that our elected Government has been all silent on the question of infrastructure. No, they have been very vocal and busy indeed, the only detail seems to be that they have a curious propensity to focus on pachyderms of the white variety.

Indeed the current Government has been going to extremely legally tenuous links to keep one of them on its feet, barely. In a State where even the smallest PWD tender's legality and transparency is questioned, the State Government has just broken all conventions and regulations to award a Rs 300 Crore assignment without even the pretense of a bid. Cabinet Ministers and even Chief Ministers have been hauled to court and even to jail for far smaller contracts, but apparently this is okay because otherwise the apparent 'god of mass transit' would walk off the project because he believe that his pet DMRC shouldn't be put through the minor "indignity" of a global bid. Mr Sreedharan (the afore-mentioned divine entity) and his minions believe that even the Rs 300 Crores or 6% of the currently tossed up project cost of Rs 5000 Crores is a "discounted price" as opposed to the usual 12.5% that they apparently rob from everyone else! That sort of consultancy fees would blow the socks off even the priciest global consultants, the likes of Bechtel or PB whose fees for the greatest urban engineering project of all time - Boston's $ 22 Billion (Rs 110,000 Crores) Big Dig - was between 7-11%. The Big Dig was in a very expensive market, whereas DMRC's costs, bench marked to Indian labor costs, which form the bulk of the project management consultant's costs, would be much lower. Personally, I have only heard of figures well south of 5% for these services, especially for large infrastructure projects. Whatever be the case, it is ludicrous to imagine that a contract of this size can be awarded without a bid. To put this in perspective this amount is more than the original tender for the entire Trivandrum Road Improvement Project! It's not as if there are no other agencies executing mass transit projects in India. The Hyderabad and Mumbai mass transit projects are doing very well without DMRC, and there is no reason why any one of dozens of the major consultants around the world could not offer a better price than the DMRC.

Even the over eagerness of the DMRC and, its newly retired ex-boss and the most recent addition to the Indian pantheon, should raise an eyebrow or two. When the prime proponent himself has gone on record to say that heavy rail mass transit systems are not suitable for cities with populations less than 4 Million people, it is mystifying why the same concept is flogged for a city with less than half that number. The small print is that the project in Ernakulam would utilize light rail technology, which is essentially an elevated tram and bears little resemblance to its bigger cousin in Delhi. It will have just 2-3 small cars per train and have a fraction of the carrying capacity of the systems in Delhi, Bangalore, Chennai or Mumbai. Furthermore, other than a few extensions proposed in the future, there is still no comprehensive plan for a network. A single line mass transit network is a recipe for failure, as has been made painfully evident in many cases across the world, including our very own Kolkata Metro, of which Sreedharan was part of decades ago.

What everyone's expecting.....Heavy rail "Metro"

(Courtesy: Asiabizz.com)

The reality - Elevated Light Rail!!

(Light rail in Charlotte, NC; courtesy: Oldtrails.com)

Essentially a gigantic hoodwink is in progress here, which the proponents have realized cannot be funded through a partnership with a private investor because its is clearly financially infeasible and hence is being funded by a combination of State and Central funds and a massive loan from JICA. And one wonders where all this money is going to come from. The mass transit project essentially benefits only the city where it is located, as opposed to a project like Vizhinjam which benefits the entire State's economy and that of the nation itself.Will the State contribution and the money needed to pay back the JICA loan be collected through local taxes, as it should be, or funded from the State treasury, from everyone's taxes, as it is most likely to be? A decision of this nature cannot and should not be left to the demands of one individual, however revered he be. What happens if this individual changes his mind tomorrow or becomes unable to participate in the project for any reason, will we leave the project unfinished??! No, a project of this scale has to be dependent on capable agencies and robust management structures, not on individuals! And the DMRC has itself been in trouble with the top Government auditor, the Comptroller and Auditor General of India's office, which has accused it of lax safety procedures and of being a fiefdom of its own (Sreedharan who abruptly left office at the odd age of 79, denies these allegations and says that "only results matter" while the Government conveniently refused to table the report in Parliament). Sadly, both the Government and the Opposition, not to mention the media and the general public, seem to be in thrall to an individual. If one were so inclined, one could suspect this gentleman is most interested in a cushy retirement posting close to his ancestral home but then he is a most honorable man!

And as if one white elephant riding the rails and wasting the tax-payers' money wasn't enough for Kerala, the Government has just started planning for another one, which seems more a white whale than a mere pachyderm! While the price tag for the light-rail-dressed-up-as-a-Metro was about Rs 6,000 Crores, the estimates for the proposed "High Speed Rail Corridor" is expected to be north of Rs 1,00,000 Crores! Having written in detail on how ludicrous and potentially fiscally disastrous this project would be, a couple of months ago, I am not going into the subject in detail but there are a few questions that neither the starry-eyed Government nor its 'usual suspect' consultants, DMRC and INKEL, seem to be interested in even pondering, let alone answering.

Firstly, where is the market study to substantiate a project that will cost more than 8 times the annual Plan for the whole State? Bullet trains compete in speed and for passengers with airlines. In 2011, despite the massive expansion in airline and airline capacity capacity, the total number of airline passengers in India was equivalent to just about 5% of the nation's population. Since many people fly multiple times, the actual number of people who use airlines and hence would pay a premium for speed would be much lower. So are we suggesting that an investment that would essentially bankrupt the State be spent on a project that would benefit less than 5% of the population? Not to parody Obama and his 1% Vs 99% war cry, but in a country that still struggles with poverty, unemployment and even access to electricity and drinking water, there are surely better uses of any available funds. Next, other than providing high speed travel for a small section of people to and from a small number of stations, perhaps ten in all between Trivandrum and Kasargode, the bullet train provides no economic benefit because it cannot carry freight and hence cannot reduce the burden on Kerala's highways that are literally bursting with traffic and which will just get more congested when the 4.5 Million TEU Vizhinjam Container Transshipment Terminal comes on line. Even if high speed rail travel is a desirable end, there are ways and means of achieving speeds of up to 200-250 Km/hr even on conventional rails that are not only cheaper but can also carry freight. Finally, whoever decided that Kerala needs High Speed Rail? Was a complete transportation study of the State ever conducted to identify current and future demand patterns and the best technological solutions to meet them? No, of course not. When we have our resident spin doctors, the DMRC, advising bullet trains (we should be thankfully that they haven't pulled mag-lev out of their hats just yet!) as the magic bullet (pun intended!) to solve all of Kerala's transportation woes, no one will question it. Of course, sir yes sir!

At this rate, we will have the same agency suggesting how to build the replacement for that aging dam north of Idukki and even how to save Malayalam cinema from a rampaging Santosh Pandit! And our well-meaning leaders will legislate a path clear for them. It's high time that we see through the smoke-and-mirrors act and understand which projects are realistic and will bring benefits to the State and which ones are very expensive pipe dreams.

In the past few months, there has been a clear preference for the fanciful instead of the feasible and we have heard all sorts of ideas such as flying pod-cars, which should have gone to the trash bin not the State Cabinet. There has also been a distressing tendency for projects associated with Trivandrum like Vizhinjam, Technocity, the monorail (which, as opposed to its cousin in Ernakulam seems to have vanished into feasibility study oblivion), the International Convention Center and the Life Sciences Park to find scant mention in the Government's list of priorities, if any mention at all. Despite the fact that the Transport Minister was elected from the city, Trivandrum is still short of 10 Volvo buses which were paid for with JNNURM funds. Except for a few voices like Dr Tharoor, there's hardly a mention of Trivandrum even when a battle rages over mundane things as garbage disposal. When this Government got elected in May, I had a faint hope that things would be different this time around and that the State Capital and its projects would get fair attention. Alas, how wrong I was!! If Piravam doesn't vote as it should, we may be in for four more years of the same!

The Lack of a Vision a.k.a How Things are Done in Kerala

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Sun, 04 Dec 2011 16:37:00 +0000

While the need to have a Vision is often emphasized for successful organizations, the same holds even more for public policy making. Coherent visions are often absent in mission-critical projects in Kerala and this leads to short-sighted plans which often leave much to be desired.

On the occasion of having completed 11,315 days of existence, I took a few minutes off to try and figure out what was my vision for the rest of my life. Since it was still a bit grandiose, my thoughts shifted to why that most essential of all components of a strategic plan for a State or a City was patently absent from how the lives of the citizens of Trivandrum were being planned out by their elected Government and the legions of public servants. Rather than meander through a whole forest of sorry examples of vision-devoid planning and execution, let me just focus on three immediate ones to drive home my point to you, the recipients of this sort of unimaginative thinking.

The first example is everyone's favorite infrastructure project, the deep water port and container transshipment terminal proposed at Vizhinjam in the southern part of the city. After reading through in detail, the plethora of reports produced for the project, I couldn't help but come to the saddening conclusion that the highly-paid consultants of the project had failed to realize the true potential of what could be India's most important hub port. Here again, there is a plain lack of vision, which should have been set by the Government or its nodal agency, VISL. Of course, the consultants, led by IFC, were being paid to help come with this as well but their attempts to evolve a vision and a mission, neither are ambitious enough nor are they connected to market realities. In short, Vizhinjam has been sold very short as yet another container port which has to compete with Colombo, Dubai and even the likes of Ernakulam, on mere cost terms. A good vision would have enabled the studies to reflect the fact that with its advantages of proximity to the world's busiest shipping lane, its natural draft and the lack of a need for any major maintenance dredging, not does Vizhinjam have an inherent cost and market advantage, but it could develop into a hub port for the entire Indian Ocean region which has great strategic and economic importance (for example, the fact that the bulk of the world's crude oil and coal sources lie along its rim!). The report played down the potential for ancillary activities such as ship-building (fortunately, CSL doesn't seem to have paid much attention to the report!) and the establishment of a power plant based on imported coal (Kerala can only produce about 40% of even its current power requirement!) No, a real vision would have seen Vizhinjam's true potential to be an economic engine to transform the entire State's economy by introducing for the first time in its history, global logistics connectivity at the best rates possible in India and the promise of abundant power that is a key requirement for economic development. With few, if any, natural resources, Kerala and Trivandrum can only follow the Singapore model which depends on great logistics, abundant and high quality human resources and power availability to foster economic development to propel it far beyond what the rest of India can achieve at the current pace.

For this to happen, the Government needs to accept that Vizhinjam is the one Top Priority for it and not joint-third most important project or whatever. From the evident lack of pressure that the State has been putting on the Center to complete the small matter of the security clearance of the final two bidders, one would even suspect if the UDF wishes that if they wait long enough, these bidders would also go away?! If one also factors in the Cabinet's googly in asking CSL to consider Azhikkal rather than Vizhinjam/Poovar as a location for their Rs 1500 Crore expansion, it would seem that their "vision" is see Vizhinjam eke out a living as a fishing hamlet for all of perpetuity! In a better world, one would hope that the Government would complete land acquisition and infrastructure development through budgetary support (rather than wait for debt to be raised, which can happen only after the bid is finalized and the environmental clearance has been realized, by August 2012 at the earliest!), create a land bank in Trivandrum district for industrial development related to the port and start to put in place the transportation infrastructure necessary for extending the hinterland of the project out across Kerala and into Southern Tamilnadu (rather than only two districts of Kerala as the current project report would have us believe!).

If only the Government had gone in to conceptualize an economic development plan (a Vision!) for the State, which could have then translated down to specific initiatives such as those described above. That would have been cheaper and far more impactful than all those fanciful conference and "investor meets" that the State's industrial promotion agencies host each year.

Our next example, is far closer to home. A few days ago, the media reported that a "Master Plan 2031" for Trivandrum was in the making. In fact, The Hindu reported that:

The first draft of a master plan for Thiruvananthapuram is expected to be submitted to the government by December 31.

The new Thiruvananthapuram master plan 2031 will be a document outlining the city's development agenda for the next 20 years, focusing on the land use pattern, traffic and transportation, infrastructure, solid waste management and sanitation, which will be revised every five years.

A one-day workshop was convened here by the Corporation and the Town and Country Planning Department on Saturday to discuss the preparation of the plan.Officials of various departments; Corporation councillors; chairpersons of standing committees; Corporation officials as well as members of the 19 working groups constituted for giving regional inputs on development issues, trends, area-specific development plans and projects for proposed master plan, took part in the workshop.

It sounds like this was another "babu-only" party and doesn't sound like it had avenues for participation by NGOs or individuals who could add a lot of value. I recall that when this whole exercise had been kicked off in 2009, it has been a multi-lateral effort involving the Government, the Trivandrum Corporation, surrounding municipalities and panchayats, NGOs and individuals and I had been lucky enough to participate and present at the brain-storming session. Today, it seems to have been whittled down to a closed-door study which is unlikely to spend much time and effort on such concepts as a Vision. The exercise had begun by looking at the metropolitan agglomeration of Trivandrum, referred to as the Trivandrum Capital Region, but from the way the Corporation is running the show now, it seems that the scope has shrunk back down to just the Corporation which is highly counter-productive considering that the Corporation has expanded multiple times in the last couple of decades and that projects of manifest importance such as Technocity and the IISER & IISST lie just outside its limits. It is safe to assume that by 2021, forget 2031, the Corporation would have expanded to encompass these areas and more. Therefore, the Master Plan for 2031 should look at the entire urban agglomeration and then some, extending from Varkala to Neyyatinkara, and to Nedumangad/Vithura in the East.

A real urban area master plan needs to start with a forward-looking Vision statement which then distills down to specific initiatives in land use planning, density, urban structure, transportation, economic and social development and utility planning. For example, it could start with, "in 2031, Trivandrum will be a metropolis of 4 Million people which provides a world-class, economically vibrant, cosmopolitan, equitable and sustainable lifestyle to its citizens." It should be forward looking and should plan for the Trivandrum of 25 years in the future not the city of today or 5 years from now. In this way, unlike past attempts at a master plan which were already out of date by the time they were promulgated, the 2031 master plan at least will have a chance to be relevant at least till 2021!

Finally, we come to the recent spate of "transportation" proposals in and around Trivandrum, which include a monorail system for the city, a bullet train linking Trivandrum to Chennai and now, lo and behold, a "pod-car" or Personal Transportation system! Yes, ladies and gentlemen, some hare-brain wants to bring Tom Cruise's car from the Minority Report and use it as a substitute for the monorail. No matter that PRT solutions are used for localized transportation needs such as within airports or within highly dense Central Business Districts, or that they do not have anything near the capacity demanded by a viable mass transit system. Let's ignore these flights of fancy for now, the main concern is that while the Government talks about all those thousands of Crores of investment, there is no coherent plan in place, let alone a vision!

Consider the monorail, it cropped all of a sudden, perhaps based on comments made by experts like Dr N Sreenivasan. But the Government took a pretty unilateral call on not just the alignment of the system but also the technology to be deployed. It mandated NATPAC (the one saving grace thus far, NATPAC is a competent choice as opposed to certain agencies whose standard reply to any question, even "what's the day today?", is "Metro Rail"!!) to submit a preliminary report on the Balaramapuram - Attingal route. This is sort of like a patient coming, complaining of a stomach ache, and the doctor immediately prepping him for surgery without bothering to find out if his ailment is just a bad lunch!

If the issue in question was traffic congestion, the solution should have started with an analysis of the traffic situation in Trivandrum and its likely evolution over the next 15-20 years. This in turn depends on a variety of factors such as the urban plan (which is still on the drawing board!), demographics, socioeconomic development and physical environment. The outcome of this study would be an identification of where, what and when transportation solutions are needed. Is monorail the only choice? Could a cheaper system like BRTS work or do we need to plan for a higher-capacity system like heavy-rail MRTS? Instead of restricting NATPAC to a narrow scope (monorail on a particular corridor), the study should have been much more comprehensive. A study of this nature in 2002, although confined to the then limits of the Corporation, led to the conceptualiztion of TCRIP. In the ten years which have passed since then, it has already become insufficient as evidenced by the congestion experienced on the newly widened roads!

Urban planning and transportation planning are a classic chicken and egg combination. One feeds off the other, yet can influence it as well. For example, a new monorail line is usually planned depending on the current and projected urban structure (to connect major hubs and dense residential catchments) but this line can also influence how the city develops because new developments tend to cluster around the mass transit line. The current "one route" mass transit system is utter folly, as evidenced by so many examples in India and across the world, where single lines have failed because of their inability to provide door step to door step connectivity. Only a multi-route network with subsidiary bus services integrated into it can provide a economical, viable alternative to the personal automobile and thus achieve success. As the first step to this, the Government needs to have a vision for the metropolitan area which needs to be translated into an effective urban transportation system.

Sometimes, the big picture is lost when one focuses on short term gratification. The question is whether this Government would like to be known as one which dreamed up a gazillion Crores worth of fanciful, never-to-be-implemented projects or one which actually executed fewer but impactful projects such as Vizhinjam and a true mass transit system which improved the lives of citizens for generations to come.

Is there a Vision in the room yet?

A Solution for High Speed on Rails?

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Sun, 06 Nov 2011 18:09:00 +0000

Since the previous article on the High Speed Rail proposal, I have received a lot of feedback from many of you, through comments here, on SSC and on the Trivandrum Updates blog, which is the best one-stop shop for news about Trivandrum!

Let me thank everyone who chipped in and all those who didn't but still took the time to read my thoughts. While many of you supported the idea, there were a lot of folks who saw the current proposal for the bloated white whale (Moby Dick, please excuse again! that it is.

After a bit of further thought on the subject and a few discussions with like-minded friends of mine, here's a short proposal for the powers-that-be.

Without jumping straight to the HSR option, it would do the Government well to appoint a consultant to study all options for implementing "high speed and cost-efficient travel" along the North-South axis in Kerala. This could be HSR, mixed-use rail, an Expressway or even jet-skis on our canals! The message is simple - DO NOT discount any option without studying it properly
If Rail is selected as the best option, adopt a phased approach rather than move directly to the ludicrously expensive HSR
Acquire a 30 m wide RoW either along the existing rail alignment from Trivandrum to Kasargode or along a new greenfield alignment (say, Trivandrum - Kottarakara - Punalur - Muvattupuzha - Kanjikode - Mallapuram - Kannur - Kasargode, with spurs to Ernakulam and Kozhikode) where the land acquisition will be the least expensive.
Construct two electrified broad-guage lines with an operating speed of at least 200 Km/Hr
Operate Acela-like high speed train-sets at up to 250 Km/Hr
Also operate high-speed freight trains to between Trivandrum and Ernakulam, Coimbatore, Chennai and Bangalore with containers and perishable goods being the predominant cargo
All existing semi-high speed trains, such as the Rajdhani, Duronto and Jan Shatabdi can be run on the new tracks as well
In the future, say 10 years hence, if a market emerges for true HSR, two tracks, either at grade or elevated, can be constructed along the same RoW since no new land acquisition will be needed

It looks like the HSR wave in India is more a knee-jerk reaction to China's splurge on the technology rather than on economic fundamentals. I would guess that the feasibility study will point to only a few viable routes, if any, such as Mumbai - Ahmedabad, Delhi - Agra (?) and Chennai - Bangalore. These would work if the Union Government is ready to invest dozens of Billions of dollars into it. At this time, I would doubt that. For a comparison, the total cost of the National Highway Development Program may be of the order of Rs 150,000 Crores ($ 32 Billion) over the last decade or more, whereas implementing all six HSR corridors proposed now would cost at least $ 200 Billion! If the projects go out on the BOT route, it seems unlikely that there will be any takers without massive subsidies (essentially all the capital expenditure!) and if at all, only for the few routes identified above, not for less attractive ones like the stretch in Kerala.

On the other hand, the phased, hybrid rail development that I have outline above could be set in motion at much lower cost and almost immediately. The principal initial expenditure would be land acquisition. The RoW would need about (600 Km X 25 m = 15 Sq. Km = 3750 acres). If the alignment is chosen to run through sparsely populated interior areas with low land valuations, the average cost could be kept down to about Rs 1 Crore/Acre. This means that all the land could be acquired for about Rs 4000 Crores, or if it is done in two phases, Phase I (Trivandrum - Ernakulam) would cost about 1500 Crores. As mentioned in the previous article, the rail system itself would cost about Rs 5000 Crores.

Since this is not a pure HSR project, the Indian Railways could be roped in. IR does not have the funds, so the State would have to chip with most of the cash, probably through a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV), which raises debt or issues bonds. Additionally, because of the freight traffic involved, agencies like ConCor and the operator of the Vizhinjam deep-water port could be roped in as equity partners. We could even try to bring in a private operator for the new rail system, who would maintain and operate the system in exchange for fees charged to the operators such as IR, Concor etc.

This would be a complex, hybrid deal with multiple stake-holders but it would probably be able to raise the funds needed in a practical period of time because it can tap more than one source. Rather than leaving the implementation to IR (whose record in Kerala is pathetic) or to a new Central Government entity (for which Kerala would be the lowest priority), this option takes the development of the system into the hands of the stake-holders who are most interested in it - the people of Kerala and key business entities like the Vizhinjam port.

Sound very logical, doesn't it. But to move to a pragmatic solution like this, the State Government needs to take a step back from its current fixation on HSR as the ONLY solution and snap out of the spell spun by DMRC, which seems to have been anointed the one-stop shop for all transportation solutions, even those with no relation to mass transit! The latter has a lot of vested interest in pushing its one-size-fits-all solution, as is evident from its proposal to use Standard gauge (used in the Delhi Metro) instead of the Broad Guage (used in the rest of the Indian railway network), which means that the two systems will never be compatible - forget having trains run on either network.

It's so early in the day for HSR (nothing more than a presentation, yet another shell company and a Face Book quip or two!) that the State Government still has the option of stepping back from economic suicide. Now, if only they would listen.......!

Do We Need Bullet Trains?

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Wed, 02 Nov 2011 21:24:00 +0000

Over the last few days, a High Speed Rail system linking Trivandrum to Bangalore and Chennai, as well as to Mangalore, has been proposed. While this seems like a sure-shot way to enter the 21st century in terms of infrastructure on the heels of Japan, France and, most recently, China, do we really need bullet trains at cost of over Rs 160,000 Crores ($ 34 Billion)?!

Act One: The Government of India decides in 2009 to set up High Speed Rail lines along six corridors. However, the only corridor proposed in South India is Bangalore-Chennai-Coimbatore-Ernakulam. Apparently some gent at the Railways forget the State's Capital and biggest city!

Act Two: Last week, a high-level meeting in Trivandrum, chaired by the CM decided to go ahead with the implementation of a High Speed Rail corridor between Trivandrum and Mangalore, via Ernakulam at the trifling cost of Rs 160,000 Crores. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, One-Hundred-and-Sixty-Thousand-Crores, about 13 times Kerala State's annual plan for 2011-12!

Act Three: The Central Government decides to extend the proposed HSR line to Trivandrum (no surprise, they want the line to have some chance of success right?) and amend the pre-feasibility study accordingly. Our enterprising CM immediately claims that he saved Rs 50,000 Crores on his Facebook page! That would be like my claiming that I just saved a few million bucks because I decided not to buy that Gulfstream jet which I could never afford anyways! What a joke!

Jokes apart, the gazillion rupee question is do we need bullet trains? This project will cost almost as the Gross Domestic Product (GDP) of Kerala, that's a rather humbling figure.

What is High Speed Rail?

HSR is typically defined as a passenger rail system capable of operating at speeds exceeding 200 Km/hr, although many systems in Japan, France, Germany and China operate in excess of 300 Km/hr.

HSR's history began with the stream-lined steam trains of the early 20th Century, built up through diesel-electric and gas turbine propelled trains in the middle of the century before truly breaking out through the electric-powered Japanese Shinkansens and French TGVs.Thereafter, HSR has spread throughout Europe, in a limited manner in the US and now to China. It's now perceived as a viable alternative to short and medium-haul air travel and is often a favored public investment for Governments looking to pump in money to boost their economies.

And how is HSR different from ordinary rail systems? The most obvious difference is the rolling stock, those sleek bullet-shaped trains using stream-lined, high-power locomotives and high-tech passenger cars. But the railway lines themselves are high-tech, usually continuously welded and replete with sensors. The track alignment also needs to be devoid of sharp bends and gradients which means that the route usually has to go over, under or through obstacles like roads, rivers, hills and urban areas. All of this means, that HSR is very expensive when compared to conventional rail, perhaps as much as ten times more.

Why HSR?

HSR competes with road and air travel. In the case of the former, HSR has higher capacity, higher speed of travel and is much more environmentally friendly but is suitable only for inter-city travel as opposed to intra-city travel, where mass transit systems such as monorails and MRTS comes into play. Against aircraft, which are much faster, HSR is competitive at distances of up to 600 Km, where the sum of time taken to travel to and at airports and actual flight times, is often greater than time spent on HSR because they tend to run from city center to city center and seldom experience congestion-related delays.

This sounds pretty good in Kerala, where the distance from Trivandrum to Ernakulam is about 220 Km, to Kozhikode is about 400 Km and to Kasargode is 560 Km. Our roads and rail lines transport very high volumes of passenger traffic. A North-South HSR line sounds a no-brainer. Right?

Well, no.

First of all, let's consider the price-point of HSR. A ticket is likely to cost at least 2-3 times more than the fare of an air-conditioned chair car today. In fact, it would be comparable to the air-fare between Trivandrum and Ernakulam, which is upwards of Rs 1000. This means that the demand for this service is likely to be similar to that for air travel between the two cities, which is not exactly breaking down the gates at this point. One might argue that the Japanese and European HSR systems carry billions of passengers a year, but those are nations with 20 times the per-capita GDP of India and where air travel is wide-spread as opposed to the less than 5% of our population that uses that mode of travel. The best comparison is China, where despite massive funding by the Government, the HSR network's high ticket rates are proving to be quite a headache. (A ticket between Shanghai and Beijing costs upwards of $ 90, compared to the per-capita income of $ 4,300)

Next is the gargantuan cost of the system. With a price tag of Rs 160,000 Crores (let's discount our CM's creative accounting, looks like that day at IIM-K has gone to his head!), it looks more like the white whale (Moby Dick, please excuse!) than a white elephant. To put this into perspective, this project will cost 40 times what is needed to build the Vizhinjam project out to all its phases or will place each of us (man, woman and child) under Rs 60,000 of debt!

Of course, Kerala has its own quirks such as the paucity of land and the paranoia about access controlled transportation systems. After all, one of the slogans that de-railed the much-touted predecessor of HSR, the Expressway project, was the fact that it would divide the State into two. Guess what, HSR tracks are strictly fenced off (you don't want an auto straying into the path of train barreling down at 350 Km/hr), so the same (absolutely hare-brained) concerns are likely to be raised again. Plus, a 20 meter (that's what the proponents claim!) wide strip of land, 600 Km long would need to be acquired. Hmmm, about 12 Square Kms = 3000 acres.

Finally, does it all make any financial sense? What would it cost to build and operate. Let's consider a simple scenario of Trivandrum - Ernakulam, which would see the highest traffic and would be built first. The Capital Cost is estimated at around Rs 45,000 Crores, let's take Rs 50,000 Crores. Since the Central Government has not committed to any funding ( and is unlikely to, considering the state of its finances), the money will have to be raised from development finance institutions (read World Bank, ADB, JICA etc) and from the commercial markets. Even if we assume a tame interest rate of 7%, the interest cost alone works out to a whopping Rs 3500 Crores a year. And then HSR systems have high costs of operation and maintenance, with many components including the trains themselves being imported. 5% of the capital cost would be a good figure to start with, and this works out to another Rs 2500 Crores. So, a conservative total of Rs 6000 Crores/year. And this without allotting funds to repay the loans or for maturity of project-based bonds!

How much money will it make? The current proposal talks about trains every 30 minutes in either direction during 7 peak hours (6 - 10 AM and 5 - 8 PM) and every hour during the rest of the day. A total of 31 X 2 = 62 trains a day. The proposal also says that each train will have slightly over 800 seats. That means the total carrying capacity would be around 50,000 passengers a day, and assuming 90% occupancy (!!), the HSR would carry about 45,000 passengers each day. Let's assume everyone pays the end-to-end fare of Rs 1000/trip, leading to a daily revenue of Rs 4.5 Crores and an annual revenue of Rs 1642 Crores.

(Of course, this assumes that there are 45,000 people out there who would be willing to pay a thousand bucks to travel from Trivandrum to Ernakulam and vice versa. To put that into perspective, that is probably an order of magnitude more than the number of travelers between the two cities using air travel or air-conditioned train cars.)

So that leaves HSR slightly under Rs 4400 Crores in the red! Even if we only look at O&M costs (if Sree Padmanabhaswamy contributes the capital!), an annual subsidy of over Rs 1000 Crores is needed to keep the system running.

In case, I made it over complex, the HSR is NOT financially viable. (Not that such minor details have dissuaded proponents of projects like the one Mr Sreedharan (Yes, he is behind HSR as well! Surprise, surprise!) is pushing in the second city of the State.)

Is there a Better Alternative?

I can already imagine many of you, especially those who fervently believe that the current incumbent of Cliff House coined the word "development", would be grumbling that I am being a bitter nay-sayer. In my defense, I am not trying to shoot this down and propose that all of us crawl along congested rail tracks and roads till the end of time, I have a couple of possible alternatives which will not push the State into Chapter 11.

First, let's assume the ideal case that the Government of India agrees to take care of all the funding, at least for the Trivandrum - TN border (to Coimbatore) stretch. The project goes out on a BOT basis and a private developer takes the bid, no doubt with substantial (hopefully, less than 100%) Viability Gap Funding from GoI, possibly as an annuity. In this case, the O&M subsidy could be shared between GoI and GoK. This could be potentially met from the extra tax revenue of economic developed spurred by the new HSR system. Given the state of the Central Government's finances, with the National Highway program running out of steam and the Indian Railways on the verge of bankruptcy, this sounds an unlikely scenario as of now. And then again, even if GoI coughed up the money, that would be eventually out of our pockets.

Second, we could go ahead with building two new tracks from Trivandrum to Ernakulam (and to the Kerala - TN border) on a fresh alignment which suits HSR. However, the tracks will be built to a lower specification, perhaps for speeds of up to 150-200 Km/hr and the trains would be similar to today's Shatabdi. Eventually, as the market becomes more developed, the tracks could be upgraded and high speed trains introduced. This would certainly be cheaper but given the need for major land acquisition, it would still be very expensive and socially disruptive.

Finally, there is the pragmatic option. The current Trivandrum - Ernakulam rail lines are heavily congested, operating at upwards of 110% of rated capacity. With a deep-water container transshipment terminal coming up at Trivandrum and rapid urbanization of the Capital and Ernakulam, both cargo and passenger traffic are likely to surge. Instead of breaking the Treasury on HSR, why not build two more tracks more or less along the same alignment (which avoids heavily built-up areas for the most part)? The new tracks would better in many ways, continuously welded and avoiding the worst bends and gradients. These can make use of existing stations. They would also have only gated railway crossings, either manned or automated.

So two more tracks running maddeningly slow trains? Not exactly. Even tracks not dedicated for HSR service can accommodate some pretty fast trains.The Acela Express is a high-speed train operated by Amtrak between Boston and Washington D.C. on legacy tracks which received only comparatively minor modifications to accommodate the sleek trains which can are capable of hitting 250 Km/Hr.

Image Courtesy: Wikipedia

The Acela was my first HSR experience and these trains are some of the very few across the world which actually make money, having captured almost 40% of the high-speed travel demand in the densely populated North-East corridor which includes Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington D.C. The Acela incorporates a nifty feature to run on legacy tracks, it tilts as it negotiates bends! The Acela's average speed is restricted well below its maximum by the inadequacy of old overhead electric supply lines and old tracks, both of which are being upgraded. An Acela-clone, running on modern tracks with a modern overhead supply system could easily average over 200 Km/Hr, covering the distance between Trivandrum and Ernakulam in just about an hour!

There is another major advantage of this solution. Local trains would continue to use the existing track. The new tracks would be used only for the HSR trains, which means that there would be a lot of spare line capacity on the new lines. This could be utilized for high-speed freight services. No, I am not crazy. There are freight trains that run nearly at HSR speeds, the one which most readily comes to mind is the Eurotunnel Shuttle. This routinely runs at 150 Km/Hr.

Image Courtesy: bram_souffreau @ Flickr

In fact, they are already talking about freight trains running at 200 Km/Hr on the proposed Dedicated Freight Corridors. One specific type of freight train comes to mind, container trains running between Vizhinjam and Ernakulam, Mangalore, Coimbatore, Chennai and Bangalore. Operating at speeds in excess of 100 Km/Hr and during off-peak hours, these trains could link India's premier container terminal to important cargo sources/destinations like Bangalore or Coimbatore in 9 hours flat. This kind of service allows the Vizhinjam project to expand its effective hinterland to as far as Bangalore, wherein it becomes much faster and often cheaper to send a container by fast container train to Trivandrum and get it loaded directly onto a 11,000 TEU mainline container ship than send it to Mangalore or Ernakulam and have it loaded on to a smaller ship from which it would be transshipped at Vizhinjam, Colombo or Dubai. High-speed cargo movement can be achieved with existing locomotives and with relatively minor modifications to the rolling-stock. In my view, this ability to move cargo at high speed is the USP of this option.

Yes, the last option is not exactly HSR as you would see in Tokyo, Paris or Shanghai although an Acela clone looks as much of a bullet train as....well...a bullet train! Do we want to spend an immense amount of extra money to travel 300 Km/Hr instead of 200-250 Km/Hr? Is it worth spending Rs 50,000 Crores to travel between Trivandrum and Ernakulam in 45 minutes when we can traverse the same distance in just over an hour, by spending just over 10-15% of that (a new pair of double gauge electrified lines will cost about Rs 20 Crores/Km plus up to Rs 1500 Crores for the high-speed train-sets - a single train-set costs about $ 30-40 Million - Rs 150-200 Crores)?

Personally, the answer is NO! I hope that the Government gets a competent agency that has no motivation to recommend a ludicrously expensive white elephant (a good selection criteria would be to exclude anyone whose name looks like "DM_ _") and gets an independent study done whose aim should be to identify all rail-based options for efficient passenger AND goods traffic, not just to look at options WITHIN the HSR model. This way, all of us may save some real money and time!

The Next Big One - Cap Gemini lands in Trivandrum

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Tue, 25 Oct 2011 16:54:00 +0000

Hot on the heels of Oracle Corporation that officially commenced operations from Technopark last month and announcements that IT giants Aegis and ITC Infotech would soon commence operations at the center of Kerala's IT world, here comes the largest technology company in Europe, Cap Gemini, which is all set to launch its latest global center at Technopark soon. In fact, the French tech giant has already started putting out feelers for employees to come to Trivandrum.

Technopark and Trivandrum are heating up on the Indian IT scene, a fact acknowledged by many CEOs at the recently concluded NASSCOM summit at Trivandrum, where many of the top bosses expressed a strong interest in setting up shop in Trivandrum, even chastising the media for failing to let the world know how hot Trivandrum really is! NASSCOM also opened its first office outside the top 7 Metros, at Technopark, another endorsement of the IT's hub coming of age!

Looks like things are changing, we are now in the big league, big time. Stay tuned and strapped in!

Getting Back on Track - Railway Development in Trivandrum

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Sun, 25 Sep 2011 17:37:00 +0000

After years of heady promises and Budget proposals, the development of railway infrastructure in and around Trivandrum has fallen far short of where it should be given the growth of the city, high-technology and the upcoming deep water port at Vizhinjam. With the Indian Railways facing serious resource constraints, let's take a pragmatic look at how we can achieve maximum impact with the least cost possible.

Once upon a time, I talked about how Trivandrum Central would be upgraded to a world-class rail terminus, Lalu Prasad's new mantra for the upgradation of important stations (18 in all, if I recall correctly) including New Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai and Trivandrum. That was four years ago, and since then we have heard nothing else but for a few vague mentions in successive Rail Budgets. One would have been forgiven for thinking that the grandiose idea was mere lip-service, and now it is official. The Railways have given up on the prototypical "World-class" station, New Delhi, and decided to proceed with a much humbler, in-house upgrade. The fact that there is no confidence that the rail hub in India's Capital and largest city can be re-developed, bodes ill for the historic station in Kerala's Capital and largest city. Combined with the near-zero progress in the development of the much-touted Kochuveli Satellite Rail Terminal and the proposed railway station and yard at Nemom, not to mention the still-invisible MEMU (commuter trains on the mainline) and a long list of announced-but-still-on-paper trains, the scorecard of the Railways is looking very dismal for our city.

Trivandrum Central (Image Courtesy: Wikipedia)

Despite being one of the busiest stations in South India (second only to Chennai) and having robust revenues (Rs 585 Crores from passengers alone in 2010-11),Trivandrum has been on the receiving end of neglect from the Railways for some time now, especially since a lot of decision making authority was shifted to Chennai from the Trivandrum Division. Even projects such as the expansion at Kochuveli, that were formally announced and alloted budgetary support, have made scant progress. Sadly, the latest effort to jump-start the development of these project by holding a meeting of the Railway Minister and his team in Trivandrum seems to have a cropper without any firm plans being put in place, save for the announcement of a yet another official to "coordinate" developmental activities in Trivandrum. Dr Shashi Tharoor did manage to take the Minister on a tour of the facilities in Trivandrum and explain the crying needs of the day to him, and one hopes that this will bear some fruit. All in all, one is left wondering why the Trivandrum Division, which earns hundreds of Crores for the Railways, is saddled with old, second-rate coaches (even for the so-called flagship Rajdhani Express!) and what can be at best described as step-motherly treatment?

Now that it is pretty clear that we cannot expect much munificence from the cash-strapped and unsympathetic Railways, it would be prudent to let go of grandiose plans like two-level platforms (yeah, we will still have to go to Europe or China to see those!) and focus on what all can be achieved at minimum expense that can have the maximum impact.

Trivandrum Central

Kerala's busiest station is congested beyond belief, its 5 platforms proving very unequal to the task of handling over 50 trains a day. To add to the congestion of a city-center station is the need to have nearly a dozen stabling lines and a Coach Care Center. At various times, it has been proposed to shift the non-operating lines and the Center to Kochuveli and Nemom, and to replace them with at least another 5 platforms. Although Kochuveli now has a couple of platforms and stabling/sick lines, these are hardly adequate even for the growing number of trains based at the station let alone for decongesting Central. And Nemon seems even further down below the horizon, at this point.

Jam-packed! (Image Courtesy: Me @ Flickr.com)

So what are the quick-wins at Trivandrum Central?

Shift as many parked rakes as possible on to the unused lines at the Kochuveli goods yard and even to Kazhakkoottam and Nemom (this will necessitate additional shunting but that should be manageable on a temporary basis)
Construct at least two additional platforms at Trivandrum Central immediately (freeing up 4 stabling/sick lines should provide enough space for this); these could be used both for the MEMU service and for long-distance trains
Construct Multi-Level Car Parks (MLCPs) on the land available near the Thampanoor flyover and on Powerhouse road. These can be done on a PPP basis so that there is no capital burden for the Railways.
Extend the South pedestrian overbridge to cover all platforms; evaluate extending the North overbridge to the bus terminal
Open the North entrance (well constructed but closed ever since its inauguration a few years ago!) opposite the bus terminal, with proper access control and potentially with additional ticketing counters
Upgrade all platforms to the standards of Platform One with improved floors, digital signage and other amenities
Provide additional high-mast lighting on both sides of the Station and add more lights to the platforms
Provide fee Wi-fi on all platforms; this could be easily arranged through a sponsorship

These steps can be undertaken at minimal expense, and can be acted upon immediately.

On a slightly longer term, perhaps in the next four years or so, once Nemon becomes atleast partially operational, the Coach Care Center can be shifted there and the land thus freed up can be leased out to a budget hotel operator such as Tata's Ginger or Accor's ETap to set up a 150 key no-frills hotel. This would not only create a rail-hotel at no expense to the Railways, it could also bring in steady revenue through lease-rentals and/or a revenue share.

Additional land could be leased out on a long term for commercial development, such as a shopping mall, because the Railways have almost 800 feet of frontage onto the newly widened Powerhouse Road. This could help pay for further improvements at the Station. This could include setting up another three or four platforms, to take the total to ten or eleven. Two platforms can be dedicated to the MEMU/commuter services.

With its unbeatable location in the Center of the city and its proximity to other transit hubs such as the Thampanoor bus terminal, it is for certain that Trivandrum Central will continue to be the busiest station in Kerala for a long time and the best tactic for its development would be to ensure that only passenger embarkation/disembarkation happens here with all other ancillary activities such as maintenance shifted out to Nemom or Kochuveli.

Using the strategy outlined above, the outlay for the next couple of years may only be about Rs 20-30 Crores with a significant portion of the overall budget in the near future coming through PPP. It is important that all commercial development - MLCPs, hotel and commercial - be given out to private players and not done directly by the Railways or agencies like TRIDA, whose record is pretty dismal.

Kochuveli Railway Terminal

What started with a lot of fanfare as a project to develop the once-sleepy station at Kochuveli into a rail terminal which would almost completely replace Trivandrum Central as the city's main station has petered out into a crawling saga of fund-starved construction, which has only thrown up three platforms, a few sick/stabling lines and precious little else. A number of trains have started operating out of the terminal but its infrastructure continues to be woefully inadequate.

After a lot of talk in the last six years, the Railways coughed up only Rs 30 Lakhs last year, against a minimum of Rs 10 Crores needed to establish the basic infrastructure needed to handle the 28 trains that are operated from it every week. This being the case, the following would be a viable action plan for the station:

Complete the island platform and at least five pit/stabling lines in the coming year; this would allow for some pit lines to be freed up at Trivandrum Central
Complete the foot overbridge linking both sides of the terminal; there are frequent bus services along the Veli road on the other side
Ensure stops for as many long distance trains as possible at Kochuveli to ensure round the clock activity which would allow for amenities such as taxis, buses and food outlets to be operated viably; this would also reduce passenger congestion at Central
Erect high-mast lights for the terminal premises and street lighting for the approach road which needs to be widened to 3 lanes
Establish a MLCP on a PPP basis
Complete an additional 2 platforms and a total of 10-12 pit/stabling lines by 2013

This course of action would necessitate no more than Rs 10 Crores, all of which have already been allocated but is yet to physically disbursed. Over the longer term, an additional Rs 20-30 Crores would be needed for the additional platforms and pit/stabling lines.

In the meantime, 2-3 stabling lines can be developed at Kazhakkoottam station to help take the load off Central, land for this is available at the station and the expense involved in laying the lines would be minimal. Kazhakkoottam also needs improved signage and ticketing facilities, together with stoppages for more peak hour trains and more frequent bus shuttle services from and to Technopark Phases I, II and III.

Nemon Terminal

There were big plans for Nemon, halfway between Central and the proposed cargo yard at Balaramapuram (Junction?!) where the spur line from the Vizhinjam deep water port will meet the mainline. As with the other wishful plans that we have heard from the Trivandrum Division, nothing has transpired so far. The reason is again the same, no money has actually been allocated in the Budget, and on top of that, there is apparently a need to acquire a large parcel of land for the station to be developed to its full potential.

The Railways already have 30 acres of land here, which seems to be more than sufficient for the Coach Care Center (CCC) to be set up although it seems that most of the land is not along the rail line, hence the need for acquiring more land. I would hazard a guess that the maintenance facility which need not be along the rail line, as a platform needs to be, can be set up on the existing land as long as it can be connected to the main line. In comparison, the current CCC facility at Trivandrum Central occupies only about 5 acres of land in the tightly-packed complex. If land is not an impediment, this may be accomplished at a cost of around Rs 50 Crores (a rule-of-thumb figure, considering the fact that a massive coach maintenance facility in Bihar, that sprawls over 118 acres, set to be commissioned in November will cost Rs 230 Crores), invested in two or three phases. Considering the fact that all the equipment can be shifted from the existing facility, the incremental cost would be the civil work on the sheds and new tracks to park the coaches under repair. If budgetary support can be found, this project can be completed in 18-24 months, without waiting for land acquisition to inch its way to a conclusion and this would free up land at Central for commercial development.

In the longer run, additional pit and stabling lines can be added at Nemom so that all North-bound trains operating from Trivandrum Central can be parked here till they are shunted to the platforms there, converting Central to a pure "pass-through" station and freeing up land for the final build-out to 11-12 platforms. Nemon also needs pass through platforms to be used as a commuter rail facility to service the rapidly developing southern part of the metro region.

Commuter Rail, Cargo and other Initiatives

Even a year after the completion of base facilities in Kollam, the long-awaited Mainline Electric Multiple Unit (MEMU) service shows little sign of commencing operations between Neyyatinkara and Kollam, connecting Trivandrum with its southern and northern satellites, including Attingal and Varkala en route. The MEMU is basically a commuter train, such as those that form the backbone of the transport system in Mumbai, but which is capable of running on the main line instead of just on segregated commuter rail lines. The MEMU is designed to move high-volumes of commuters over relatively short distances (an hour's travel or so). It is imperative that at least 3 MEMU rakes be immediately made available so that services on the Kollam - Neyyatinkara stretch can be run every 30 minutes during peak hours (7 AM to 8.30 AM and 5 PM to 6.30 PM) and every 45 minutes to an hour off peak. The introduction of the MEMU service will allow the shuttle trains to be taken out of service and their coaches redeployed to long distance trains. The services along the Kollam-Varkala-Attingal-Trivandrum-Balaramapuram-Neyyatinkara would help in the integration of the Trivandrum metropolitan region and the merger of Kollam into it as a satellite city.

This is a nearly zero cost initiative since the MEMU infrastructure is already in place and the induction of the MEMU rakes would be in effect offset by the freeing up of the existing shuttle rakes which can be redeployed to other services.

On a longer term, the proposed Chenganoor-Adoor-Trivandrum line and/or the proposed Erumeli-Punalur-Trivandrum line can be routed to proceed via Venjaramoodu and Nedumangad to meet the mainline at Nemom. This would provide a commuter ring line to the east of the CBD where MEMUs can be operated to draw in commuters from catchments along the the M.C.Road such as Kottarakara Anchal and Adoor.

The commissioning of the Vizhinjam deep water port will definitely bring additional traffic on to the rail network around Trivandrum even if the primary purpose of the port is transshipment. There will be some hinterland cargo for direct delivery/pickup from Southern Kerala and Southern Tamilnadu, as well as from key industrial clusters like Coimbatore and Bangalore, drawn by the direct access to the biggest mainline ships that will call at Vizhinjam, instead of getting cargo transshipped via, say, Colombo. If a coal terminal is set up at Vizhinjam, and the coal is shipped out by train instead of by a conveyor belt or barges/coastal coal carrying ships, this could mean 30,000 tons or ten rakes will need to be moved daily (for a annual throughput of 10 Million tons of coal). With the rail network running well above 100% capacity at present, this would necessitate the construction of a third or fourth line. The bare minimum requirement would be the immediate doubling of the Trivandrum - Kanyakumari line, on to which the Vizhinjam port would be connected at Balaramapuram. Unfortunately, the Railways seem to be feigning ignorance of this tiny little development, even while they cleared the construction of the rail spur to the port last year. Consequently the Trivandrum Division needs to prepare a master plan for the entire network, not just for Balaramapuram station, to handle the cargo traffic due to the port that is all set to be commissioned in 2014-15, and also ask Concor to immediately conduct studies to link Vizhinjam with the Inland Container Depots (ICDs) in key locations such as Bangalore, Coimbatore and Ernakulam as well as to set up an ICD in proximity to the port.

A Concor Double-stacked Container Train (Image Courtesy: Trainweb.com)

Finally, there is one relatively inexpensive but impactful change which the Railways need to make at the earliest. In fact, it would probably cost no more than a few dabs of paint and changes to websites. The change in question is to modify the name of Kochuveli station to Trivandrum Kochuveli (TVK?), Nemom to Trivandrum Nemom (TVN?) and Kazhakkoottam to Trivandrum Technopark (TKP?). When I last enquired about this with the Railways, they mentioned that it could be done with a simple request from the State Government. Painless changes, but ones which would spare thousands of people the trouble of figuring out the fact that a station with the code "KCVL" is actually located in Trivandrum!

Dr Shashi Tharoor has encapsulated many of the points, mentioned above, in a letter that he had sent to the Railway Minister, but these initiatives now need to be pursued with renewed vigour well in advance of the Rail Budget due in February 2012. The State Government too needs to move on from symbolic gestures like hosting the Railway Minister at Trivandrum and create a time-bound game-plan to take a priortized list of projects to pursue with the Railways using its new clout at the Center (being of the same flavor as the Central Govt.) as well as getting all 20 MPs from Kerala on board. Simply put, the initiatives listed above will not cost the Railways more than about Rs 100 Crores over the next 3 years, and this must be put in perspective with the Rs 900 Crores that the Trivandrum Division earned in 2010-11, Rs 600 Crores of which was from passenger traffic alone. By developing additional passenger and cargo capacity, the Railways stand to double or triple this figure and hence, what is proposed is a big win-win.

It's all very good to have ambitious visions for the development of the rail infrastructure in and around Trivandrum, but in today's resource constrained context for the Railways, and given the urgent need for many of these projects, it is most pragmatic to go in for the easy-wins first and to proceed on a track which minimizes immediate expenses and which tries to find revenues to feed costs along the way. Fingers crossed on many of these proposals making coming to fruition, in which case the Railways stand to keep playing an important role in and benefiting from the development of Trivandrum.

P.P.S: Thanks, Dr Tharoor!

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 22:51:00 +0000

Just a quick note to thank Dr Tharoor for his feedback on the main article about Vizhinjam. More than being the MP of Trivandrum, Dr. Tharoor is now on the Director Board of VISL, perhaps smartest move the new Government has made with respect to the project. Even before joining the Board, he has been very active in supporting the project during the tenure of the previous Government, having brought in the Port of Barcelona to advise and potentially partner in the project and also having used his influence in Delhi to help expedite the key environmental clearance project.

I am sure that his leadership will be key in taking Vizhinjam from planning to reality. As I mentioned towards the end of my article, the Vizhinjam port is a vision, not a mere plan. And in Dr Tharoor, I believe we have a visionary who understands the potential of the project and appreciates how much it can change the face of our city!

P.S: A UMPP at Trivandrum

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 17:05:00 +0000

A few days after I posted the previous article, in which I written that one of the key opportunity areas that the market study for the Vizhinjam port had missed was the possibility of setting up a coastal coal-fired power plant that would import its fuel through the deep-water port at Vizhinjam.

As if to underscore the necessity of such a project in maintaining energy security for Kerala into the foreseeable future, The Hindu reported on September 16 that the Kerala State Electricity Board was exploring the possibility of setting up a 1000 MW thermal power plant in Orissa adjacent to the coal fields that it had been allotted a few years ago. In the report, the Electricity Minister himself admits that the State's energy needs are likely to exceed 6000 MW by 2020 compared to the current generation capacity of just 1800 MW. This is possibly a conservative figure given the fact that the current peak demand is about 3100 MW, at a relatively low per capita consumption of about 700 KWh/year, and once this consumption rises to the global average of over 2000 KWh/year, the peak demand could be as high as 9000 MW!

This means that even if the power plant in Orissa becomes a reality (and I wouldn't bet much on that given the KSEB's dubious project execution capabilities even at home), Kerala is likely to end up with a deficit of well over 5000 MW by 2020 or so. A UMPP's typical capacity is around 4000 MW, and while some of this power may need to be shipped out in the early years of operation, Kerala alone would consume its entire output by 2020, which is not that far down the line!

One of the reasons mentioned for locating the KSEB plant in Orissa and not in Cheemeni in North Kerala, as originally envisaged, was that there were protests about its environmental impacts. If that was the case with a back-of-the-beyond location, there will surely be louder protests against a plant next to the State's capital and only metropolitan city. However, today's coal-fired plants are a far-cry from the smoke and ash spewing monstrosities that most people visualize when they hear the term "thermal power station". With state-of-the-art technology like super-critical boilers, integrated coal gasification, scrubbers, ash filters and clean imported coal (with 4 times less gas, and twice the energy content of Indian coal), a modern coastal UMPP will be much cleaner than many of the legacy industries currently operating in Kerala. The fact that no UMPP has yet been tripped up by the stringent norms of India's Environmental Clearance process is evidence enough of this. MIT's report on the Future of Coal gives more details about clean-coal technology, for those of you who may be interested in knowing more.

The bottom line is Kerala needs energy to sustain its growth as a modern, service-oriented economy and if we are to become self-dependent in this regard, a coastal UMPP is the best solution, given the fact that we have India's deepest port and an ideal strategic gateway for the import of clean, high-energy coal from Australia, Indonesia and South Africa.

The bid process for Vizhinjam is nearing its conclusion and we will know its outcome soon, I just hope that the winning bidder comes to the above conclusion as well.

Vizhinjam - Doubting Thomases Listen Up!

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Sat, 20 Aug 2011 19:31:00 +0000

The bid process for the $ 2 Billion Vizhinam deep-water port project in Trivandrum is nearing its close. The project's nodal agency, VISL, recently released key project reports which have many areas of concern from the perspective of any proponent of Vizhinjam. Some of the most glaring issues are discussed in the article, together with suggestions how the reports could have been made better and some longer-term proposals for the development of this mega-project!

Perhaps you may not have noticed it in the continuing avalanche of temple treasure, Team Anna and the threat of another global meltdown, but the last few days have seen Kerala's largest ever infrastructure project take two key steps forward. The first, of course, is the submission of bids by two entities, one being the Adani Group's Mundra Port and the other a consortium of the $ 3 Billion Indian conglomerate Welspun and Australian construction giant Leighton. One of these firms will now be selected as the master operator of the port (subject to them meeting all the tender guidelines) and potential as the EPC (Engineering Procurement Construction) contractor for Phase I. The second piece of news is that the agency entrusted with the development of the $ 2 Billion deep water port project, Vizhinjam International Seaport Limited, finally launched a decent website, albeit long AFTER the tender process was completed.

Excellent news, one should say, considering the travails that this landmark project has been through in the recent past (not to forget a small 60 year implementation delay!). The fact that the Adani Group has submitted a bid is possibly the most significant as their Mundra Port is already the biggest private port in India and is poised to become the nation's busiest port in the next 3 - 4 years. The Adani's also have a 4000 MW coal-fired power station in development in addition to the Ultra Mega Power Project (UMPP) being built by the Tata group at Mundra, and are the largest coal importers in India. The Group recently acquired the Abbot Point Coal Terminal in Australia for the trifling sum of $ 2 Billion. Mundra already has two container terminals, one operated by the Adani Group itself and the other by DP World, together handling well in excess of 1.5 Million TEUs a year and with a combined capacity approaching 3 Million TEU. One hopes that the Adani Group might have ambitions in both containers and coal at India's deepest port, Vizhinjam being even deeper and better located than Mundra. The second consortium seems to be more focused on the construction aspect of the project which could be worth over Rs 2000 Crores in Phase One alone, and would bring in a specialist port/terminal operator if awarded the tender (unless they already have one already onboard).

All well and good, but there are a few troubling issues as well, which have come to the fore with VISL belatedly posting on its website crucial documents related to the feasibility study of the port (Yes, those were completed a year ago but were finally posted, you guessed right, AFTER the bid process was over! Genius, huh?!). To put it as succinctly as possible, the consultants appointed at great cost to promote the project seem to have taken a less rigorous and far more pessimistic view in many areas, than even a layman like yours truly. This definitely needs some looking into, because these very reports could determine the success or failure, at least of this round of tendering. And hopefully, this won't end up being a post-mortem analysis. There were over 600 pages of reports to be read in all, including a market study, a technical options report and a preliminary project plan, all of them highly technical in nature. So what follows is the result of a quick review, by someone who's not a marine engineer by training, so do bear with me as I make my comments.

Where did all those containers go?

When the latest edition of the tender started, VISL started floating some traffic estimate numbers for the project. 2.8 Million TEUs in 2044, for example. Wait a second, 2044?? Why were the latest numbers less than half of what the winning bidder in the last round, Lanco, had estimated within a shorter time span and well below what the original project consultants L&T-Ramboll had put down? I was left wondering whether the current market research consultant, Drewery, had missed out a zero here or there. On closer examination of the market study, it seems there are several points of departure from what would be logical sound assumptions. Firstly, the estimate of Indian GDP growth seems pretty conservative, considering the fact that there is already a pronounced shift in economic power towards India and China. Even accounting for the current hiccups in the global economy, the outlook over the medium and long term should be far more robust than what the study predicts. This in turn, affects the growth rate of overall Indian container traffic, of which a portion will flow via Vizhinjam. Next, the report seems to underestimate the ability of a port with unbeatable draft and minimal operating costs to take traffic away from its competitors. Basically, little credit seems to be given to the way a highly dynamic market like container shipping operates.With significant sensitivity to shipping costs, containerized cargo tends to follow the least cost path and if Vizhinjam can offer equal facilities as competing ports such as Colombo and Dubai at a lower cost, container lines will naturally choose the port of total least cost.

At this juncture, the Market Study takes a very pessimistic view of how much traffic Vizhinjam can capture from Colombo, its main competitor, which currently handles about 40% of all container traffic to and from India. A rather circumspect traffic-cost analysis shows that Vizhinjam is at a $3/TEU disadvantage with respect to Colombo assuming existing tariffs (Pages 130 - 134). Not only is this margin a negligible 2% of the existing tariff at Colombo, it is clear that with significant advantages such as the landlord port model which allows initial capital costs to be spread out through Government debt support, minimal dredging requirements and exemption from the tariff constraints at major ports, Vizhinjam should be able to significantly under-cut Colombo in terms of handling costs. The report goes to make assumptions that Vizhinjam would be unable to attract cargo bound for West and North India (Page 176) since these would be delivered direct to the deep draft ports in Gujarat such as Pipavav and Mundra. To an extent this is correct since these are close to the industrial hinterland of North and Western India. However, when we consider the biggest container ships, with carrying capacities greater than 11,000 TEUs, they are unlikely to make more than one stop in a country. In this scenario, Vizhinjam allows them to offload containers in India with minimal deviation from the Suez - Malacca shipping route followed by these behemoths on their round trips from the US/Europe to East Asia. Thus, it is likely that at least some of this cargo will be transshipped at Vizhinjam. Furthermore, the study also harps about Colombo's distance advantage to ports on the Indian East Coast, which seems rather suspect when one factors in the savings in distance that will be brought about by the Sethusamudram shipping channel (Of course, assuming that the ghosts of Ram's mythical simian army don't stop it permanently!). Finally, Vizhinjam has the added advantage of geo-political safety as far as Indian container traffic is considered which no foreign port can guarantee (least of all Colombo, which happens to be in the same country where the Chinese are almost done building what will be a pseudo-Naval base!).

Despite all this, Drewery estimates that Vizhinjam will only be able to capture only about 12 - 15% of the total transshipment potential available to Vizhinjam and Colombo (Page 196), due to their superiority over other regional ports such as Tuticorin and Cochin. And this is after Vizhinjam offers sizable discounts to Colombo's tariff! One wonders why this should be so? If Vizhinjam is cheaper, is on the Indian mainland and has the same, if not better connectivity, to Indian ports, why should it not be able to draw a much greater share of transshipment cargo away from Colombo. The report makes some vague reference to the fact that Colombo has greater "hinterland" cargo than Vizhinjam and hence can create bigger parcel sizes for shipping lines. However, an examination of the tables given in the report (Pages 179 - 180) shows that Sri Lanka's own hinterland volume is less 5% - 10% of India's, which means that lines that choose to transship at Vizhinjam instead of Colombo would not lose a critical volume of cargo. Moreover, if Vizhinjam provides a lower cost option, there is no commercial reason why cargo from Sri Lanka should not be transshiped at Vizhinjam although Drewery very conveniently rules it out citing some unspecified "feeder costs".

Even if we take Drewery's report at its face-value, the transshipment volumes for South and East India - which Vizhinjam could most effectively target - is 5 Million TEU in 2015, 8.5 Million TEU in 2020 and 20 Million TEU in 2030. With an effective tariff structure, one can assume safely that Vizhinjam should be able to target 20% - 25% of this traffic, even if it cannot split the honors evenly with Colombo. This means that the projected transshipment traffic for Vizhinjam should be 1.0 - 1.3 Million TEUs in 2015, 1.7 - 2.2 Million TEUs in 2020 and 4 - 5 Million TEUs in 2030, which is much closer to the original L&T Ramboll/Lanco estimates.

At this juncture, one needs to call into question the veracity, intent and sincerity of the report by Drewery, which fails to be aggressive or bullish with its container volume estimates, which is the need of the day when a Billion dollar bid process is under way. Instead, it uses rather circumspect logic to generate a pessimistic estimate of the port's potential. This fact is made painfully evident, when one sees that the only first-hand data survey conducted for the study was in Cochin (Page 168), not among global shipping lines or at competing hubs such as Colombo or Singapore. Somehow, that doesn't sound quite reassuring. And no, the bad news doesn't end here.

And how about the rest of the port?

Having read through the dismal figures about container traffic in the report, if any bidder does get to the rest of the cargo forecast, he or she would be at a loss to find precisely that, non-containerized cargo, in the report. If this report is to be believed, Vizhinjam is unlikely to ever see bulk cargo of any kind such as coal and petroleum, although it does offer up dribbles of cashew and timber as scant consolation. The report then goes on to deep-six (pardon the nautical pun!) ship repair and leaves some vague recommendations for the equally trumpeted cruise market. Despair not, let's take a second look at these areas.

Drewery starts off by predicting that Vizhinjam would be a non-starter as far as coal, one of the world's most voluminous bulk cargo items, is concerned (Page 212). Firstly, the report says that there are no thermal power plants, steel plants or cement plants in and around Trivandrum. Well, that doesn't exactly require an expensive consultant to discover, does it? And to make sure that no one asks an inconvenient question such as "What if we build a port based thermal power plant?", the report quashes any likelihood of a coal-fired power station by saying that plentiful natural gas from the LNG terminal in Ernakulam and the KG Basin would erase any need for coal. Unfortunately for the second assumption, there are a few inconvenient truths sticking out. First, coal continues to be cheaper than gas, as pointed out in this report by the International Energy Agency and which is the reason behind the Government of India going ahead with nine Ultra Mega Power Projects (UMPPs), all with capacities of 4000 MW or more and all fired by coal.Second, imported LNG is extra costly, and the LNG terminal at Ernakulam is already struggling to find customers. Thirdly, the KG basin gas is already in short supply, even if we choose to ignore current supply problems.The demand for energy in India is rapidly increasing. A recent report by KPMG states that power consumption in China is about 1800 KWh/person while in India it is only about 750 KWh/person (to say nothing of the 15,000 KWh/person in the US!). This means that even to reach a figure comparable to China, India would need to add about 100,000 MW of power generation capacity in the next few years. While some of this will be renewable, nuclear and gas-based power generation, it is evident that the bulk will have to come from coal-fired stations which account for over 70% of current installed capacity. Since Indian coal production is capacity constrained and Indian coal is of relatively poor quality, a significant portion of the new power demand would have to fueled with imported coal, which is one reason many of the UMPPs are located near deep-water ports like Mundra and Krishnapatanam. These allow for the import of vast amounts of coal in giant coal carriers with capacities exceeding 200,000 tons. Almost all of India's coal imports will come in from Australia, Indonesia and South Africa (now you understand why the Adanis bought that coal port we talked about in the beginning!) The last inconvenient fact for the market report is that it is easier to transmit electricity than transport coal, which means it is best to generate the power as close to the coal supply as possible and then dispatch the electricity via the National Grid to wherever it is needed. Hmmm, so which is the closest deep-water port in India to the mines of Australia and Indonesia? No prizes for guessing, it is Vizhinjam with over 18 m of natural depth and located on the Southern tip of the subcontinent.

Courtesy: Topforeignstocks.com

Considering all this, the potential to set up a UMPP somewhere in the vicinity of Vizhinjam doesn't sound like an impossibility (the key issue would be finding the 850 - 1500 acres of land needed for one of these giants) and indeed as Kerala, despite being a coastal State, has as of yet not applied for a UMPP, this is a very viable proposition. A UMPP in Kerala would incur the least cost for import of coal as it is closest to the coal sources and this could lead to a cost advantage for the project with power possibly being evacuated through the 440 KV line of the Power Grid Corporation of India Ltd (PGCIL) already ready at Trivandrum, which is meant to draw power from the Koodankulam Nuclear Power Plant. A UMPP would need the import of over 12 - 15 Million Tons of coal annually via Vizhinjam. While it can be argued that this is a very aggressive scenario considering the sensitivity around the environment in Kerala as well as the relative scarcity of land, it should have been included in the report as a possibility for a potential bidder to consider, as Mundra Port may already have done on their own (or so we may hope!). After all, a near-permanent solution to Kerala's power woes and a Rs 20,000 Crore investment in the power project would be a powerful incentive to cobble together the land necessary for the project in a rural corner of Trivandrum district.

Next, the report moves on to petroleum traffic, namely crude oil and petroleum products (Page 233). Once again, it makes the stellar observation that there is no oil refinery in Trivandrum. Duh?! It continues to exclude any potential for future oil refining operations or even for product import by saying that existing ports such as the ones at Tuticorin and Ernakulam will continue to handle such cargo. Well, to me, it seems like Vizhinjam has all of Southern Kerala and at least 3 major districts of TN as a direct hinterland where it has distance advantages over its neighboring ports. Moreover, it will have tariff advantages being outside the restrictions of the major ports' tariff regime. Here lies a clear case for import of petro products such as petrol, diesel and kerosene currently shipped via truck or train. Moreover, it is folly to rule out a refinery in the region, because there are two clear potential areas of demand for such a project. The first, and the simplest, is the vast hinterland of Southern Kerala and most of the Southern half of TN, which is currently served by refineries in Chennai and Ernakulam. A new refinery that uses Vizhinjam as a crude import terminal will be able to meet the growing demand of this region, which includes rapidly growing cities such as Trivandrum, Madurai, Trichy, Tirunelveli, Tuticorin and Kollam, at lower costs than the existing refineries. Secondly, the field of contract refining/export-oriented refining is gaining traction world-wide as consuming regions such the US, East Asia and Europe impose strict restrictions which make setting up new refineries there very difficult and open the way for strategically located refineries to process crude from sources such as the Middle-East and then send the products by tanker to the end markets. This is a successful business model by Reliance's world-beating Jamnagar complex as well as by Singapore, the tiny island being the world's third largest refining hub after Houston and Rotterdam. A sizeable refinery (a 600,000 barrel per day unit would need about 500 acres of land, about the same as the Technocity project has) could be set up somewhere in Trivandrum district or even in the neighboring districts of Tirunelveli or Kanyakumari where land is in relative abundance. Attached to the only port in India capable of handling VLCC/ULCC traffic WITHIN its basin (as opposed to Single Point Moorings far out at sea), a port that lies right on the world's crude oil artery, the refinery would have significant cost advantages and a major export market in South and East Asia, as well as further out, even to the US West Coast, in addition to the extensive hinterland as mentioned above. Again, this is an optimistic scenario but one which needs to be mentioned in a unbiased report so that prospective bidders can do their own numbers on its viability. Drewery's report makes no mention of this, the only saving grace being that it mentions that a major international firm had evinced interest in setting up a petroleum storage terminal in Vizhinjam and that a major oil company was interested in establishing bunkering operations.

One of Singapore's many refineries. Image: Fotopedia.com

Now, given the fact that about a third of all the world's shipping traffic passes by just ten nautical miles or less from Vizhinjam, on the Suez/Gulf - Malacca route, one would be forgiven for thinking that a world-class ship repair/building yard would be an attractive proposition at Vizhinjam. In fact, there have been a lot of noise made in the recent past about a Central Government initiative for a shipyard at Poovar and for the public-sector Cochin Shipyard Limited to set up a world-class yard, for the first time, at Vizhinjam.

Drewery's report mentions all of Vizhinjam's advantages - location on the shipping channel, deep draft and then plays up its apparent disadvantages - competition from Dubai and Singapore, lack of trained manpower, humid climate, "labour problems" in Kerala (huh?, weren't these guys supposed to be on our side?!) and lack of international air connectivity to bring in spares. It doesn't take an Ivy League degree to understand that there is no dearth of trained and experienced manpower in Kerala and India because I would wager quite a bit on the fact that the majority of workers at the yards in Dubai and Singapore are Indians! Humid climate....well, it's the same climate as one sees in Singapore, day for day. Labor troubles, let me not even get into that. Trivandrum Airport already has 3 dedicated freighters a week with connections to the Mid-East hubs and Hong Kong and this can easily be stepped up if equipment needs to be imported for the ship yard. It suffices to say that India has significant advantages in labor availability and supporting manufacturing facilities (ranging from world-class steel plants to engineering companies) which could make it a world-leader in ship repair/building just as the Koreans and the Chinese have become in very short order, and this is evident from the plethora of private yards which have come up, including SKIL's yard at Pipavav and L&T's complex near Chennai. The report spends six or seven pages (Pages 291-297) on this subject but abruptly stops without a conclusion or recommendation. And there is more to come on this!

There has been a lot of talk about the potential for cruise operations at Vizhinjam not least of all because it happens to be located in the district which attracts the most foreign tourists in Kerala and is located close to a shipping route used by over 300 cruise ships every year. Unfortunately, the report pays lip-service to the subject and leaves nothing other than a table (Page 290) listing some figures for traffic estimates (which looks quite arbitrary, changing by as much as 50% in some years!) as well as some disheartening anecdotes of failure among cruise lines in India, most recently the collapse of Louis Cruises' venture at Ernakulam. It's a pity that such a high-potential area (more for the tourist industry than the port itself) has been given scant attention, perhaps the report makers should have been sent a copy of the comprehensive report on the subject prepared by my better half, a few years ago!

Cruise tourism in trivandrum

View more documents from Ajay Prasad.

The report concludes with an analysis of the prospective tariffs and revenue streams from the port, which is again quite conservative. For example, it assumes that Vizhinjam will forever have to offer a hefty discount to Colombo to survive, which is counter-intuitive because once significant traffic is established at Vizhinjam, there is no further need to be sub-par with Colombo or any other port. At this point, the port can afford to charge tariffs that are revenue-neutral. Of course, the report makes no mention of any significant non-container revenue stream as we had discussed previously, whereas it would have been prudent to include this in a "High Revenue" scenario at the end.

A "clean and green" port......Huh?

The Preliminary Project Report for the Vizhinjam deep-water port has been prepared by Royal Haskoning and it must be said that they have done a fine job, at least as far as the technical aspects of port design are concerned. That said, there are a few surprises in there as well. After an exhaustive review of the site conditions (Pages 1-23), the report comes up with a set of vision key words for the project, based on the Drewery report

Green and Clean
Efficient
Competitive
Attractive for Tourism
"God's Own Port"

One is left wondering whether this is the project report of a $ 2 Billion deep-water port or a tourist resort! I am an environmentalist at heart and I love words like "green and clean", but that has different connotations in different contexts, a clean port is not the same as a clean operating theater, is it? We don't want a dirty, polluting port at Vizhinjam but we certainly do want a viable one!

And there is certainly a major question raised about the viability of the project when the report proceeds to axe three key areas of potential operations - coal import, petroleum and ship repair based on the need to have a "Clean and Green Port"! (Pages 26-27). A port is a port is a port, gentlemen. While we can deploy technology such as dust suppression equipment, oil containment booms, effluent treatment, use of electric power instead of diesel wherever possible and noise reduction, a port will never be as pretty or as quiet as a beach resort. However, most of this noise and visual impact (cranes, containers and hulking ships) will be contained within the port's boundaries. The port itself is located in natural bay and is not even visible from up and down the coast. The only reason that Haskoning quotes to keep the "non-green" operations out is to make the port "tourist friendly". Cruise operations are glamorous but typically add little direct economic value and sacrificing major revenue earners such as coal import and ship repair/building for this is economic suicide. Moreover, major cruise terminals such as the ones in Singapore and Port Klang (both of which I have personally been to) are located right in the middle of major ports which handle all types of cargo. As long as a world-class cruise terminal is available to let fussy cruise passengers disembark and embark in air-conditioned comfort, they are not much bothered by whether containers or coal is being unloaded close by.

Star Cruise Terminal at Port Klang Photo: Tan Tiong Kee at Panaramio

Consequently, these areas of operation are excluded from the port master plan which seems rather truncated from earlier versions prepared by L&T Ramboll (Pages 51-52), while the development of the 2nd and 3rd phases has also been slowed down over a longer total development time-line. I wonder how much of this will finally be left up to the winning port operator, because it will be the ultimate judge of the traffic potential of the port. Because the project is currently being pursued in the "Landlord" model where the Government is responsible for almost all the civil work - breakwaters, quay, backup area and connectivity - and the operator is only responsible for the terminal infrastructure and operations, one wonders whether the expansion of the port will be determined by the operator or the Government or both?

This is a key area of uncertainty left by the third report, by the project's main consultant, the International Finance Corporation (IFC). In its report (Page 62), IFC states that in the Landlord model the Government would be responsible for the long-term master plan of the port as well as for executing all civil work through EPC contractors, which includes even the later phases of expansion of the project. Later on, the report states that GoK should consult the winning operator about the final design (Page 76). This will be critical in preventing issues at a later stage. GoK has appointed one of the world's leading engineering and PMC firms, AECOM, as the project's EPC consultant and this a step in the right direction, although it is not clear how the final design would be developed from the work done by Royal Haskoning - whether AECOM would do this through its own in-house design team or a sub-consultant or a separate contract would be handed out by GoK. Operators will have the right to take up the 2nd and 3rd phases of the terminal, but will not be able to seek financial support from GoK as they can for Phase 1. This can be read into to mean that the operator can trigger the 2nd and 3rd phases of expansion whenever it feels that a traffic threshold has been attained and GoK would then be bound to issue the requisite EPC contracts. There is also an interesting clause by which the operator can take over the lucrative EPC contract if it bids and is within 15% of the lowest bidder, and then agrees to match the bid. This gives it a leg-up in the case of the EPC bid which is estimated to be worth over Rs 2000 Crores for Phase I alone, and may be an additional reason why a contractor like Welspun Leighton has been so keen on bidding.

A key final concern is that the RFQ/RFP process does not call for the operator consortium to have an actual terminal operator as a member at the time of the bid, only a commitment to bring in a qualified operator within a fixed time period of being awarded the bid. Although Mundra Port or Leighton Welspun, whoever wins, should be able to secure a capable operator, it would have been a much more robust proposition if the container terminal operator had been made a mandatory part of the consortium. As can be seen from the market report, the strength of the terminal operator will be a crucial determinant in the success of the project, at least early on, as it will need to have strong linkages with one or more major lines to wrest them away from Colombo. A operator-line combination like AP Moller Terminals, a sister concern of the world's largest shipping company, AP Moller Maersk, would have been ideal. However, APMT already operates terminals in Colombo and Mundra, and may not be committed to the project. There are alternatives such as Singapore's PSA or like Hyundai and MSC which also have their own lines. In the current scenario, GoK has little control over the capability of the terminal operator as long as it meets the minimum qualification criteria which are not very daunting.

All in all, the combination of reports submitted by IFC and its consultants seem to underplay the potential of Vizhinjam. None of these reports were challenged by IFC or VISL before being adopted. Perhaps VISL doesn't have the expertise to do so, but isn't that their job? These reports could have and would have been challenged by any citizen who had a few hours of time to spend in analyzing them, even without the benefit of years of maritime experience. Unfortunately, despite one of VISL's bosses over the last few years personally proclaiming to me that all reports would be published on VISL's website as soon as they were available, this eventually happened well after the final bids were received! If I was given to believing in conspiracies, which I generally am not, it wouldn't be very far fetched to wonder whether the reports were spiked to scare all interested parties off or to clear the field in favor of one or more parties. At best, they seem like rushed-up jobs (even ignoring glaring mistakes like Balaramapuram being called "Balrampur" in one place and Trivandrum's top industry being identified as "handlooms" and Ernakulam's as "IT" when the former contributes 75% of Kerala's IT exports) which are very conservative in nature and fail to make any effort to capture the real potential of the Vizhinjam project and hence fall far short in their intended purpose of attracting investors.

Proponents of the report may argue that it is best to err on the side of caution but I say that to be over-conservative, at a stage where the project is trying to attract investment in a globally competitive industry, is a very risky strategy indeed. A project report should talk about the upside as much as it cautions about the possible downsides. Vizhinjam has been and will be an aspirational project. If people like the former rulers of Travancore, Sri M.V. Raghavan and Sri. M. Vijayakumar had not dared to dream of a deep-water container transshipment terminal where today only a fishing harbor exists, we would never have come this far. By not daring to push the boundaries of Vizhinjam's potential, I fear that we may now have put up yet another speed-breaker for a project which has had to survive numerous rounds of sabotage by vested interests near and afar.

Little wonder then that out of 12 qualified bidders, only 2 put in bids. One hopes that one of these two will take Vizhinjam from being a sleepy fishing hamlet to one of the region's busiest ports. If not, this looks like a mighty poor investment of the Crores invested in the services of these international consultants and yet another resounding slap in the face of the practice of having career civil servants, instead of qualified industry professionals, run multi-Billion dollar infrastructure projects.

Fingers crossed!

TCS Development Center moves forward

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Tue, 19 Jul 2011 08:55:00 +0000

Part one of the two-part mega-story that India's largest technology firm, TCS, is scripting in Trivandrum has been unveiled! Feast your eyes on the perspectives of the 1 Million-plus SF Development Center which is part of its own 25 acre SEZ in Technopark Phase I.

Work on the 560,000 SF Phase I will commence on August 15th. The contract has been awarded to Australian construction giant, Leighton.

Stay tuned for details of its bigger brother, the Rs 1500 Crore Global Training Campus at Technocity, work on which is also set to start shortly.

Images Courtesy: Shafi @ SSC

Vizhinjam....Moving Forward

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Mon, 20 Jun 2011 03:52:00 +0000

For a change, the Vizhinjam project has been getting the sort of attention that a Rs 6000 Crore mega-infrastructure project, which can change the face of Kerala, should be getting. After the heartening progress made with the ongoing bid process, it has been embroiled in the controversy of whether it would or would not receive environmental clearance.

The recent visit to Trivandrum by Jairam Ramesh seems to have added some impetus to the project's chances of getting a green flag sooner rather than later. Despite the fact that the whole drama reeks of being staged for the benefit of the current Congress-led Government, it is to be hoped that Mr Ramesh's promise of a speedy and positive conclusion to the whole debate will be honored. Especially, in light of the fact that ports like Tata's Dhamra project in Orissa, which is in close proximity to a national park, sailed clean through with the proper mitigation measures in place.

The Environmental Question

So is the Vizhinjam deep water port going to irreparably destroy our environment? Of course, not.

Firstly, the project does not lie in an ecologically sensitive area, there are no mangrove forests or coral reefs anywhere in sight! There are no endangered species at risk from the construction of the port. Vizhinjam lies in a category of the Coastal Regulation/Management Zone that is well below the most sensitive type.

Secondly, the only environment-related response of the Environmental Clearance committee meetings that considered the project is about the question of coastal erosion. The Trivandrum coast has its share of seasonal erosion and deposition and perhaps the Committee is concerned that the massive breakwater would alter the sediment flow patterns and cause accelerated erosion in nearby areas. While this is not totally implausible, the studies conducted by top-flight agencies such as Ramboll, not to mention the simulation tests run at the wave-pool in CET years ago are clear pointers to the fact that the minimal littoral drift along the project site would not result in any massive erosional effect. Moreover, when the final design of the breakwater is done, it would incorporate sophisticated modeling techniques to ensure that adverse hydrological impacts are minimized or mitigated. This is an issue that is associated with any major marine structure, not just ports, and is not a cause for extreme concern in view of the relative benign nature of the surroundings of the project.

The other points raised by the latest EC Committee look far less scientific and more politically motivated in nature. For example, they have expressed concern about other container terminals in South India and how they would be affected by the development of Vizhinjam. For some weird reason, they even mentioned Colachel, where there is currently not even a proposal far less a concrete plan and a bid process in progress! This time, VISL - the project's nodal agency - was asked to submit an overall study of India's container sector. It seems odd that an EC discussion should focus so closely on techno-financial viability when the same EC didn't balk at sanctioning nearly a dozen major port projects just along the coast of Gujarat or gave the green flag for the Gangavaram port project just a few kilometers from the sprawling Vizag port! For an economy growing at 8 to 10% annually, which is now has the third largest GDP (in PPP terms) and which does not have even a single deep water container transshipment terminal till date, I fail to see where the question of viability or necessity lies.

That said, some of the points raised in the Terms of Reference such as marine traffic study, construction methodology and site connectivity seem to be genuine, and seem to point towards a surprising lack of completeness of the EIA submitted by VISL. Either the latter and its consultants are totally incompetent, which is hard to believe considering the consultants include global majors such as the IFC and Royal-Haskoning, or there is some sort of smoke-and-mirrors act in progress to slow down the port's development.

I believe that the project will eventually get its EIA approved. The only question is how long it will take. Hopefully, a provisional clearance can be issued with a revised application using available data, which would allow for construction to begin under carefully monitored conditions such as air and water quality, coastal erosion and so on. This is not an extraordinary practice for major projects and will allow preliminary work to begin before the results of the three season study come in (sometime in mid-2012). Without some sort of environmental nod, the current bid process is unlikely to get far and it seems the bankers are also unwilling to invest money, without such a green flag, in the Government's bid to construct the basic infrastructure.

The Landlord Model

The Good news is that the new Government is persisting with the "landlord" model of development for the project and has just awarded the Project Management Consultancy to global construction giant, AECOM. But what is this model all about? In a nutshell, this means that the Government builds and owns the basic infrastructure of the port and then leases it out to one or more operators who bring in what is called the superstructure elements - cranes and other cargo handling equipment - and operates the berths, with a share of the revenue/lease rentals accruing to the Government. This has the obvious advantages of ensuring the construction of the port itself, complete control for the State over the asset and creating confidence for investors in a greenfield project, when compared to the previously touted Build-Operate-Transfer model which would have transferred the entire burden and risk on to the private developer-operator. The Government's getting ready to invest as much as Rs 2500 Crores ($ 600 Mn) into the Phase I infrastructure, drawing on funding from a consortium of bank led by local financial giant, State Bank of Travancore (fitting indeed!).

Sounds hunky dory, doesn't it? As with anything, there are a few downsides too. When we let the Government design anything, the result typically is the most conservative and boring option possible. One major concern about the landlord model is that the Government will fail to maximize the use of India's deepest port by being conservative about its capabilities and the volume of the investment. For example, the current traffic projects are unbelievably low. If we believe what the Government has to say, Vizhinjam would see a traffic of 2.8 Million TEUs in 2030, less than what JNPT is seeing today and probably less than 3% of India's total traffic at that time. Not very bullish for the deepest and best located container transshipment terminal, is it? Especially in view of L&T Ramboll's projection of 5.5 Million TEUs during the last bid process. So either there is something wrong the fundamental logical assumption that India's deepest port, located closest to the main container routes would attract the lion's share of Indian cargo traffic or the Government is selling the project very very short. This means that the project looks much less attractive to an investor than it really is, and this would adversely impact its chances of attracting a good bid from a leading operator. Furthermore, while the current project proposal considers options such as a cruise terminal and general cargo over and above pure container traffic, there are many more options out there, as we will shortly talk about.

Secondly, the landlord model, by design, transfers a lot of the project risk from the private sector to the public sector, in this classic case of Public Private Partnership (PPP). This is beneficial in making a risky, greenfield project more attractive. However, too much of a good thing could be bad. Once more, the Government needs to avoid selling itself short. An alternative would be for VISL to underwrite the cost of developing the basic infrastructure but base the bid on how much of the cost the private operator is willing to share. This will help to minimize the burden on the Treasury (creaky as it is!) and also ensure that the private player has as much skin in the game as possible and is therefore as motivated as possible to hard-sell the port and attract as much traffic as possible. The way that the Government is pushing ahead with the Engineering Procurement Construction (EPC) contract for the basic infrastructure, I hope that they will include sufficient flexibility in the design to meet the needs of the operator's plans. In the end, it will probably mean that either the EPC tender waits till the operator on board, which could take six months to a year, or that the construction starts with the operating area left as a blank slate. The ideal scenario - conditional environmental clearance would be granted in a month or two, the operator bid goes ahead and the EPC tender is handed out in consultation with the operator in about six months from now.

What's in a Port?

So when we talk about infrastructure, connectivity and superstructure, what are we talking about? Okay, here we go into Port Construction 101!

The basic constituents of a major port project include the breakwater, berths, backup area and connectivity.

In the artist's impression above of the Vizhinjam port, the breakwater is the "J" shaped wall along the periphery of the port and stretching out into the sea. The berths are the "L" shaped area where the ships actually dock and include the cranes which handle containers and other cargo. The back-up area includes most of the rest of the port area, typically where cargo is stored. Connectivity refers to the road and rail connections which allow cargo to be brought in and taken out.

The breakwater at Vizhinjam would be a massive structure stretching between 3 and 5 Km and located in up to 20 m of water depth. It seems that Vizhinjam would use a design based on massive boulders, quarried from somewhere close by - possibly near Attingal. The breakwater shelters the port's operating area, also called the basin, from the vagaries of the sea. This sheltered area allows ships to dock in all kinds of weather conditions, ranging from the placid calm to a raging cyclone.

The berths are constructed by driving pilings into the sea and either filling the area behind with silt dredged from the sea or soil excavated from land, or using a concrete structure. Ships dock alongside the berths and they also support the cargo handling equipment - also called the port's superstructure - which includes quay cranes to handle containers, general purpose cranes and material handlers to work with bulk cargo.

The backup area is usually created by leveling existing land or by reclaiming area from the sea as in the case of Vizhinjam. It's usually used to store cargo - container, bulk materials, cars, liquid cargo and so on. Vizhinjam would involve the reclamation of over 400 acres from the sea for the berths and back-up areas, in effect expanding the State of Kerala! This avoids costly and troublesome land acquisition.

Vizhinjam will be connected to the rail and road network via dedicated links that will feed into the National Highway 47 and the main line railway from Trivandrum to Nagercoil. Survey work for this has already been completed and work is already in progress for the road connections.

All told, the deep water port will have between 3 and 6 Km of berths (if the breakwater is also utilized), allowing for up to 12 of the world's longest ships to comfortably dock. The container berths themselves could be 2 to 3 Km long, capable of handling 6 ships the size of the reigning behemoths of the seas, the Emma Maersk class, at the same time.

One Port, Many Uses

As some of us may recall, Vizhinjam started out as a general purpose port. This had its drawbacks when faced with the lack of cargo from Kerala, which is a minimally industrialized State (the port at Ernakulam gets most of its cargo from neighboring States). Next it evolved into a general purpose with a coal fired power plant attached to it, with the idea being to use the port to import the coal for the plant, as in the case of Ennore Port or the upcoming Ultra Mega Power Plants at Mundra and Krishnapatanam. Unfortunately, no one pursued this proposal to its conclusion, in which case we may have had the first energy port in India.

Ennore Port; Vizhinjam could have looked like this ten years ago

In the 2000s, as the concept of containerization caught on globally, the need for deep water transshipment terminals to facilitate movement of cargo to and from India's relatively shallow major ports became evident with the success of Colombo and Singapore as very obvious indicators. Vizhinjam metamorphosized into a transshipment terminal with its location 10 nautical miles from the strategic Suze/Gulf - Malacca shipping lane and its inherent depth of 18 m making it an unbeatable proposition. Finally, in the latest round of bidding, the project consultant recommended making the port multi-purpose once more with the container terminal as an anchor use, thus introducing more flexibility into the project and reducing market risk.

Today's economic scenario lays open a variety of uses in front of Vizhinjam. The container transshipment is a no-brainer. The rapidly expanding Indian economy is going to radically ramp up import-export volumes in the coming years and a large portion of this will be containerized. India's container traffic is expected to hit about 21 Million TEUs by 2015 (by when Phase I of Vizhinjam is expected to be operational). China's container traffic is up around 100 Million TEUs already and at India's current trade growth rates, we can confidently expect India's container traffic to be up around 100 Million TEUs by 2025 or so. There is absolutely no reason to expect that Vizhinjam which has strategic advantages over any other Indian port will not capture at least 10% of this volume through transshipment. While the deep water ports in Gujarat and those along the East Coast such as Gangavaram and Dhamra would be able to directly handle large main-line container ships (of capacity >8000 TEUs, 14 m draft), most existing major ports like JNPT, Mangalore, Ernakulam and Chennai would not be able to increase their existing drafts beyond the 12 to 14 m mark. This means that transshipment is unavoidable for these ports in order to remain competitive in view of the move by shipping lines to deploy larger and larger ships on the Asia to Europe/US routes to achieve economies of scale. This will allow Vizhinjam to tap into the traffic generated by the industrial areas in the peninsula. For starters, a deep water terminal at Vizhinjam would be able to give Colombo, the current regional transshipment hub, a real run for its money. Vizhinjam has the advantages of greater natural depth, proximity to the feeder ports (the transit between the hub and feeder ports is usually the most extensive on a per-kilometer basis) and the simplicity/security of being on Indian soil. If it is able to offer competitive tariffs (in my opinion, the Indian Government should offer subsidies to allow Vizhinjam to offer competitive rates in the National interest), there is no reason that Vizhinjam should not capture a major share of the traffic that currently flows via Colombo. Eventually, container volumes through the port should climb well past the 5 Million TEUs per year.

Another clear possibility is cruise traffic, an area that the current project proposal seem to address. India's fast becoming a major cruise destination in the Indian Ocean region with nearly 100 cruise ships calling at Indian ports like the ones at Ernakulam, Goa and Mangalore last year. The major shipping lanes across the Indian Ocean see over 300 cruise ships pass through and with the excitement over India as a tourist destination, it is not surprising that many ships are now making stops in Indian ports to allow their passengers to glimpse the wonders of our country. Vizhinjam lies closer to these shipping lanes than any other port in India, which allows the massive cruise liners to sample India with the least expense and within the least time. Moreover, Trivandrum is one of the biggest destinations for foreign tourists in India and with an international airport within 15 Kilometers of the port, tourists can fly to any part of India and then later re-join their ship at its next port of call (usually Singapore or Dubai), a type of cruise activity called cruise-fly-cruise.Ports which have cruise ships just passing through typically do not make much money because neither the ships nor the tourists stay long enough spend much other than on short tours and trinkets. The real money lies in becoming the home port for cruise ships, just like Miami, Singapore, Hong Kong or Barcelona. Other Indian ports including Mumbai and Ernakulam have tried this without success, but the fact that Vizhinjam's location in the middle of the Indian Ocean could allow ships based there to sail to a number of attractive locations such as Goa, Lakshadweep, Mauritius, Maladives, Sri Lanka and the Seychelles. Even with ships just calling at Vizhinjam, the multiplier effect on the tourism industry in Kerala that has been wilting under the effect of the recession would be justification enough for the Government to invest money in building a adequately equipped cruise terminal, rather than on grandiose schemes that some other Indian ports have been dreaming up.

The Indian Government has been looking for a couple of sites, one each on the West and East Coasts, for a world-class shipyard in an effort to boost India's presence in the global ship building and repair industry, which has come to be predominantly based in East Asia - China, South Korea and Japan. Poovar, a few Kilometers down the coast from Vizhinjam, has been proposed as a site and has gained a lot of support.The natural draft along the coast together with the proximity to a deep water port, as well as the presence of the international shipping lanes, make the Poovar site a clear winner but unfortunately the proposal has made no headway. The fact that neither the State Government nor the State's MPs seem to realize that this could be a multi-billion dollar investment doesn't help expedite the process. The port project itself could devote berth length to a ship repair facility, if not a true shipyard. This could be situated at one end of the port basin or along the breakwater. The yards at Singapore and Dubai find the majority of their thriving business due to their proximity to the shipping lane because ship owners tend to get their vessels repaired when they return empty after delivering cargo and at yard that require minimum deviation from the usual routes. Like Dubai and Singapore, Vizhinjam lies on these routes which account for about 1/3rd of the world's shipping trade, unlike major shipyards in Gujarat which lie about 3 days sailing distance away. An Indian shipyard also has the advantage of access to a more economical workforce and the massive production capacity of the Indian steel and engineering industries. A world-class ship building facility at Vizhinjam and Poovar, along the lines of the Dubai Maritime City, could finally put India on the world marine engineering map.

In the 1990s, Vizhinjam was envisaged as an energy port, one that would import coal and use it to fuel a thermal power plant. There is no reason to think otherwise now, in fact the idea makes more sense now than at any other time in the past. India plans to add over 100,000 MW of power generation capacity in the next 10 years, of which the vast majority would be coal-fired. Recent reports point to the fact that India's biggest coal producer, Coal India Limited, is going to fall far short of the demand for thermal coal as more and more power plants come online to feed the needs of India's rising giant of an economy. Moreover, Indian coal tends to be lower in energy value and more polluting that global supplies, such as those found in Australia. All of this means that a massive volume of coal imports is unavoidable into the foreseeable future. Most of this will come by sea from Australia and Indonesia. As in the case of any cargo, and more so in the case of other bulk cargo such as crude oil, coal transport sees major economies of scale - bigger ships have lower transport costs - per ton per kilometer. At present only a handful of ports like Mundra, Gangavaram and Dhamra can handle the largest coal carriers, behemoths that can carry over 200,000 tons of coal and need operating drafts of over 18 m. This is the prime reason for locating most of the giant Ultra Mega Power Projects near these ports, as each needs over 20 Million tons of coal a year. Kerala has not laid claim to one of these massive power stations but it can easily ask for one to be built somewhere in Trivandrum district, where large tracts of Government-owned land are available in the Eastern parts of the district. These UMPPs use super-critical boiler technology which minimizes pollution and produces power at low tariffs (of the order of Rs 2/unit) which is comparable to that of hydro-power. A single UMPP could not only solve Kerala's energy needs for the foreseeable future, it could export half its power to other States. If land is a major constraint, the UMPP could be built in partnership with Tamilnadu which could host the power station itself in its Kanyakumari or Tirunelveli districts (which have tens of thousands of acres of available land), with the coal being off-loaded at Vizhinjam and moved to the station by rail or long distance conveyor belt. The deep water port could also provide a facility for coal transshipment, which is analogous to container transshipment, and involves transferring coal from giant dry bulk carriers to smaller ships which can deliver to shallower, existing ports.

Vizhinjam is also the only port in India and one of the very few in the world which can accommodate Very/Ultra Large Crude Carriers at a berth. Other Indian ports have to make do by handling these giants with drafts of over 22 m at Single Point Moorings (SPM) located out at sea. For example, the refinery at Ernakulam has to use a SPM located nearly 20 Km from shore, whereas these supertankers could actually come into Vizhinjam fully loaded. This opens the possibility of having a new refinery built in or close to Trivandrum, one which could be export oriented, like the Reliance unit at Jamnagar which imports crude and exports the refined products. In short, the deep water port can lead investments of over Rs 30,000 Crores ($ 7 Billion) if the State Government plays its cards right.

Control over the Indian Ocean

Whereas once wars were fought over the control of the Aegean, the Atlantic and the Pacific, today the world's centers of maritime tension are in Asia - the Persian Gulf, the South China Sea and the Indian Ocean. The latter not only adjoins all of South and South-East Asia but East Africa and the Middle East. Almost every single barrel of the Persian Gulf's crude oil supplies passes through the Indian Ocean on its way to India, China, Japan, Europe and the US. So does the vast majority of the Asia - Europe trade and almost all of China and Japan's imports. Just how important this trade artery has become was exposed by how a few half-naked pirates were able to grab international headlines and result in the deployment of an international naval fleet seldom seen since World War II.

China has been following a "string of pearls" policy to extend its maritime influence over crucial trade routes by locating naval bases in countries along these routes. Bases have come up in Myanmar and recently in Sri Lanka, where China has just completed a deep water port at Hambantota. Recently, the Wall Street Journal and other media agencies had reported the Chinese take-over of Pakistan's deep water port at Gwador. This means that not only does China have significant secure access to the vital Indian Ocean but the Chinese Navy now has potential bases close to both the vital trade routes and Indian soil. Not to sound alarmist, but the situation is akin to the 1962 stand off between the two Superpowers, that we now call the Cuban Missile Crisis (refer X-Men: First Class!). Vizhinjam offers the Indian Navy its best possible location for a strategic base that can dominate the northern Indian Ocean and every major shipping lane passing close to India. Next to the US base at Diego Garcia, Vizhinjam offers the ideal location for a long range naval base for the Indian Navy to control the Indian Ocean. The other option is in the Andaman Islands but a mainland base would probably be more preferable. With its deep draft and the protection afforded by the Southern Air Command (SAC) fighter bases at Trivandrum, Sulur, Thirunelveli and Tanjore, the port could be a great location to deploy the Navy's new flagship, the INS Vikramaditya. Even if we are not tangling with the People's Navy (which is moving ahead with its own aircraft carrier program), long range patrol vessels located at Vizhinjam would be able to interdict any pirate threats to the shipping lanes. Indeed, the major expansion of the Coast Guard presence at Vizhinjam is a sure sign of this as are the shifting of the IAF's Maritime Operations Center to Trivandrum and the annual Dakshin Prahar exercises. The fact that SAC is being beefed up with three new fighter bases and the ongoing acquisition of both long range maritime patrol aircraft and strike aircraft like the SU-30 and the new Multi-Role Combat Aircraft is yet another sign that India is taking its Indian Ocean role very, very seriously. The Indian Navy has already asked for space to berth its ships at Vizhinjam and I would not be surprised to say a couple of missile frigates and a carrier docked in the port in the near future. In short, the port's importance as a strategic security asset is as clear as its importance as a strategic economic asset and it won't be very surprising if A.K. Antony is one of the staunchest behind-the-scenes supporters of the project!

In short, India's deepest port is far from being a simple commercial proposition. It's potential is only limited by the imagination and ambition of the Government, and it's to be hoped that the approach adopted in the coming month is not the conventional tame one but an audacious proposal which seeks to harness all the obvious advantages of Vizhinjam and transform Southern Kerala into a world-class economic powerhouse. Ideally, I would like to see the port start off with a total berth length of atleast 3 Km in Phase I with 1.5 Km devoted to container transshipment, a 300 m berth for the Indian Navy, a basic cruise terminal and the beginnings of a world-class ship repair facility in the remaining area. Simultaneously, Kerala can make a bid for a UMPP which would use Vizhinjam to import its fuel and this can form the lynch pin of Phase II that starts by around 2015, together with a doubling of the container handling capacity. From there, it all depends on the economics but I would not be surprised if the port finally ends up accommodating a greater density and diversity of uses than we discussed here. It all depends on how the first few steps - the bid, the clearances and the initial development work - fare and fingers crossed on that!

The Future Under Construction

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 17:55:00 +0000

In this awesome shot, courtesy of Vijay and posted on Skyscrapercity, we can literally see the future of Trivandrum taking shape, with the 2 Million SF Infosys campus in the foreground, the 3.6 Million SF UST Global Campus behind it (yellow tower crane), the 1 Million SF Building A of Technopark Phase III (two white tower cranes) further behind and then the 4.5 Million SF bulk of Technopark Phase I in the background. Over 10 Million - 1 Crore - SF of high-quality IT space providing tens of thousands of technology jobs in the IT hub of Kerala.

And this is just the start! Stay tuned!

Welcome to New Trivandrum

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Sat, 28 May 2011 17:07:00 +0000

After my absence for the last few weeks, caused by a bad case of over-work arising from the end of my classes at MIT and a business plan that I am working on (yes, in Trivandrum, where else?!), the good news is that I am back. The bad news is that you will have to be just a little bit more patient with me!

While I work on my next article about Vizhinjam, feast your eyes on this gorgeous video that shows the emergence of New Trivandrum, in a 10 Km swathe from Menankulam to the Airport. You can see all three phases of Technopark, the Veli-Kazhakkoottam industrial belt, VSSC, the emerging lake-front residential cluster at Aakulam, Kochuveli Satellite Railway Terminal (complete with a couple of trains!), the Air India MRO and, of course, the spanking new T3.

Hats off to Arundev, for capturing this awesome video!

Stay tuned for next post in a couple of days, I hope!

India Rising....

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Fri, 22 Apr 2011 23:44:00 +0000

I am not usually given to posting anything unrelated to Trivandrum on here, but I thought that this momentous project happening in our country deserves some recognition here. While many of us wax eloquent about the Burj Khalifa in Dubai and the skyscrapers of New York and Shanghai, let's not forget that the second tallest building in the World is coming up in India, yes you heard me right, in India!

It's the 720 m tall "India Tower" coming up in Mumbai and it will beat all current under-construction skyscraper superstars, including 1 World Trade Center and the Shanghai Tower, to stand next only to the 828 m Burj Khalifa in sheer height. It's probably a lot better looking than the BK too! Feast your eyes on this!

Image Courtesy: Jai @ SSC India

I guess it's about time, we aimed skywards as well!

Oracle sets up base in Trivandrum

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Mon, 18 Apr 2011 13:10:00 +0000

Trivandrum's status as the top Tier 2 technology destination in India has once again been re-affirmed with global technology giant, Oracle Corporation, announcing the setting up of its development center in Technopark. This is possibly the first entry of a global Top 5 Software firm into a Tier 2 city.

Oracle signed the lease agreement for its start-up space at the 500,000 SF Leela building within Technopark today, and will soon be ramping up its operations in Kerala's IT hub to a global services center. Oracle's confidence in investing in Trivandrum after a year-long evaluation process which also looked at usual suspects such as Mangalore, Vizag, Coimbatore, Jaipur, Gurgaon and Ahmedabad shows the attractiveness of Trivandrum as a technology destination even on a global scale, which has also been validated by recent PwC, Morgan Stanley and McKinsey studies.

I had once mentioned that the tipping point for Trivandrum to develop to something more than just another Tier 2 technology destination would be heralded by two key events - the entry of a top global IT player and a major IT infrastructure developer. The first has now happened, and hopefully, will result in the second sooner rather than latter. The current LDF Government deserves full marks for investing in Trivandrum, through Technopark Phase III and Technocity, although they did get a bit side-tracked with other projects which have sadly (and not very surprisingly!) borne no fruit till date. It's up to the next Government to realize that focusing on Trivandrum is the one sure-fire approach to creating a globally competitive technology hub in Kerala.

The arrival of Oracle Corporation in Trivandrum is also a proud moment for TDF which was involved directly in the discussions with the senior management of the firm right from the very beginning. TDF has marked Trivandrum to many top IT firms and infrastructure developers and succeeded in putting Trivandrum firmly on their radars, but this is definitely our biggest catch till date! May it be the first of many!

Vote for Development....and Why you Should!

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Sat, 09 Apr 2011 23:01:00 +0000

At the beginning very year, I take an informed, albeit often optimistic, stab at what the rest of the year will bring in terms of major development milestones for our city. This year I am still to do that. At first glance, it would seem that the lapse is also on account of the hectic schedule here at MIT, which is the reason why the frequency of posts on this blog has tailed off quite alarmingly in the last few months. However, there is some method behind this particular delay. This is an election year, when the people of Kerala get another chance to determine their fate. And since a lot of the subjects that we talk about on this blog have to do with the powers-that-be who we elevate to their position for five year tenures, I thought it would be best to make this year's forecast after it becomes clear who is left in charge after the electoral storm clears up.

I wish that the choice of Government was a rational one, but the truth is that it isn't. We don't elect the best people for the best of reasons. I would like to believe that we don't elect the worst, for the worst of reasons either but the reality of democracy is somewhere in between. Be it the world's largest democracy or the world's richest one, where the elected representatives have just staved off yet another potential shutdown of Government for various trivial reasons. That said, I would like to put forward some suggestions for what you should look for before you cast your vote, if you have any concern for what your City should be like in the future and how well you and your children will live in the years and decades to come. Let's forget socio-religious leanings, political ideologies and personality cults for now and take a look at some of the development issues which should guide your votes.Isn't that one of the most critical responsibilities of an elected Government too, especially in a developing nation like ours, to usher in as much of the sort of social and economical that uplifts the population as possible?

As always, I will look at things from the perspective of our City and its surrounding areas and while I can roll off a whole laundry list of things that I would ideally like the next Government to do, I will keep my list to just the five that I think are most important for Trivandrum, not just in the short term, but for years to come.

1. Vizhinjam Deep-sea Port - The incoming Government should be able to complete the ongoing bid process successfully before the end of 2011 and award all tenders for the development of the port and its ancillary infrastructure to capable agencies by the end of the year. It should make sufficient allocation in all coming budgets to provide sufficient funding support to meet the public sector commitments in the Rs 6000 Crore Public Private Partnership project. The Government should also have the resolve to fight it out in Delhi to get all the necessary clearances and Central aid for the project against stiff competition from projects in Kerala and the neighboring States. In short, the project has to be operational before 2015.

2. Technology Industry - There is little doubt that the meal ticket for the City in the near and medium terms is going to depend on the development of the technology industry and the education sector. The latest CII-PwC study has identified Trivandrum as the top technology destination among all Tier 2 cities and the next Government has to keep this growth going by continuing the development of world-class infrastructure. The focus will be on Technocity to create up to 15 Million SF of space over the next 5-8 years but there needs to be significant investment in supporting infrastructure, such as the creation of a "Growth Corridor" stretching from Vizhinjam to Attingal with world-class road, power and water infrastructure. The incoming Government has to accept the fact that Trivandrum accounts for nearly 80% of the State's IT industry and focus on growing it into a hub that can compete with the likes of Pune and Hyderabad, of not with Bangalore itself.

3. Highway and Road Development - That we have missed out on developing our road infrastructure in the recent past is a gross understatement. The Trivandrum City Road Improvement Project (TCRIP) has been the only sign of progress, albeit a very delayed one. But now that the people of Trivandrum have been given a glimpse of world-class roads, it is critical that the NH-47 be widened to 6-lanes with immediate effect, so that the coming flood of traffic from India's biggest container port and a rapidly expanding metropolitan area can be handled without mile-long traffic jams. At the same time, work on the proposed Outer Ring Roads and JNNURM city roads has to start. Most of these projects have majority Central funding but the State Government plays the all-important role of land acquisition.

4. Land Acquisition for Airport and Railway Development - Trivandrum International Airport has just got Kerala's most advanced and biggest terminal building, but T3 is already behind in terms of the growing demand at the airport. The next phases of development on the cityside are desperately needed and the ball is in the court of the next State Government to acquire land for it. The same holds true for the development of urgently needed railway infrastructure at Nemom and the tripling of lines between Nemom and Kochuveli.

5. Urban Infrastructure - While other cities across India have been profiting from JNNURM, Trivandrum has been unable to even make effective use of funds allocated to it and this has to change if the city is going to maintain the standard of living that makes it so desirable over the next decade of explosive growth. While there is a lot of Central funding available for urban development, the State Government decides on how it is deployed and once again is responsible for critical aspects such as land acquisition and planning. Trivandrum had its first mass transit system, a Rs 440 Crore BRTS project, approved in June 2009! It's high time that these and other urban infrastructure projects be priortised in Kerala's biggest and most populous city.

So these are five check boxes that your candidate/front's manifesto should definitely be able to check off. I am guessing that some or all of these issues find some mention in many manifestos, probably much lower down the priority list than any of us would like. But do mere promises suffice? Of course not, we all know full well the probability of a manifesto promise coming to fruition. No, I would back up the promises with past records and overall attitude.

I will not get into the past records of candidates because some of them have not stood for election in Trivandrum or may not be from the city at all. Case in point being the son of the late Leader. But I will give my opinion on the track records of the two fronts. It's simple, the LDF wins hands down. Not because their leaders were all enamoured of our City and its welfare, with the notable exception of M. Vijayakumar (he deserves a statue of his being put up in a prime location, of anyone alive at this point!), but because they were unbiased or equally biased with respect to all locations. The LDF let Trivandrum get its deserved share of attention and investment. They did not ignore the sheer dominance of Trivandrum as an IT hub or the natural advantages of Vizhinjam, as the UDF has tended to do. The LDF invested in IT infrastructure across Kerala, a policy that leads even the likes of Karnataka or Tamilnadu, but did not ignore Trivandrum for the benefit of any other city. On the contrary, the previous UDF Government very openly tried to force companies that made a beeline to Trivandrum to locate in Ernakulam at a time when the State Capital still had a chance to catch up with the likes of Pune and Kolkata as a Tier 1 IT hub. The LDF has also not shied away from making public investments in infrastructure, of which Trivandrum together with Ernakulam and Kannur have been the greatest beneficiaries, be it the Rs 450 Crores invested in Vizhinjam or the Rs 800 Crores invested in Technopark and Technocity. So in terms of being unbiased and ready to put the money where the manifesto is, the LDF comes off on top.

M.Vijayakumar is not standing for re-election, a crying shame in my honest opinion, but VS is still there as an unbiased CM candidate as are strong leaders like M Sivankutty and C. Ajayakumar (Kazhakkoottam constituency), who are likely to be influential in power, if not members of an LDF Cabinet. Despite allegations about his being anti-private sector, VS has overseen, directly or indirectly, more private and PPP investment than any other CM in Kerala's history. I have interacted with him directly on more than one occasion and I have seen his commitment to worthwhile projects that can really benefit the State and its people, as evidenced by his strong sponsorship of projects like Vizhinjam, Technocity, Kannur Airport and Vallarpadam. Case in point, his strong support for the Government's "landlord" strategy for Vizhinjam and the allotment of 82 acres of land in Technocity to TCS for its Rs 2000 Crore Global Training Center even when his public disagreements with the Tata Group in Munnar are well known.

The only plus that I see on the side of the UDF is that a State Government that they may form will have big brother in power in Delhi. Not that we have benefited a lot when the Congress was in power both in Trivandrum and Delhi but I believe that the one man in the Congress who has shown no bias against Trivandrum - A.K. Antony - may be able to work some more of his Centrally funded magic and bring some benefit to the city that has become his home over the last few decades. Additionally, I also believe that the UDF's most likely CM candidate (and there are half a dozen gentlemen who have all given orders to their personal tailors) - Oommen Chandy - will finally realize that IT is not equal to only "Smart" City and that urban infrastructure also means projects other than the "Metro". I wouldn't put my money on this happening but it has become clear that folks in the Capital city have finally started to become more cognizant of what they deserve.

I still cannot get over the fact that I cannot cast my vote this time. I have voted in every single election since I got the right of Franchise (except one where my name mysteriously disappeared off the electoral roll and I discovered that only after I flew in from Mumbai on the day of the poll!). But I hope that at least a few of you will ponder over the points that I have made here and will cast your vote in favor of the most deserving candidate/Front.

Also, try out this interesting survey which polls your opinion on a wide range of issues and then tells you which party's views and ideology matches yours the closest. It's a joint venture of the University of Kerala, an IT firm and the Center for Democratic Studies. I do not agree with all points in the LDF's ideology (lol, after all, I am a bona fide capitalist!) but it was no surprise what the survey's outcome indicated. Please do not consider this the best way to decide whom to vote for but it is an useful guide to understand where your ideals and values lie on the ideology map of the major companies. This web-site allows both voters and candidates to put up their views, but unfortunately, it hardly seems to have been used. Next time, maybe.

Finally, for those of us who believe that our votes don't matter......THEY DO! If we do not exercise our right to franchise, we should not complain about the sort of Government that we get. And remember that the Government determines almost every facet of how we live, work and have fun, and take many of the decisions that could determine how our children and theirs live. So think about it and make an intelligent choice!

Bussing it up in Trivandrum!

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Sat, 02 Apr 2011 14:08:00 +0000

In this interesting shot captured on the fly by my friend Xeno, from SSC Trivandrum, one can see three recent additions to the Capital city's ever widening roads. An articulated bus on the left, a Volvo 8400R on the right and the top deck of a new double-decker sticking up behind the Volvo.

I remember those days when Trivandrum used to be one of the few cities in India, the others being Mumbai and Kolkata, to have double deckers, road-trains and trailer-buses plying on its roads. Folks from all across Kerala used to come and gape at these road kings all the time!

Technopark Phase III shaping up!

noreply@blogger.com (Ajaypp) — Sun, 27 Mar 2011 05:38:00 +0000

Kerala's largest building, the 1 Million SF Technopark Phase III, is rapidly taking shape as work progresses at a brisk pace to meet its late-2011 completion deadline.

The distinctly designed angular buildings have been designed by star architect Hafeez Contractor and are designed to provide world-class, sustainable space for IT companies. At least one of the world's top 10 technology firms will be taking up space here in the months to come. Stay tuned, folks!

Image courtesy: Sudheeshnair @ Skyscrapercity - Trivandrum

And here's the awesome video tour of Phase III once again for your viewing pleasure!