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Skyrider
In Limbo
The ambitious
sky bus promises to be a fuel and cost efficient solution to traffic congestion.
But until they see one in operation, planners remain unconvinced, writes
India Today's Sandeep Unnithan.
M
Srinivas and Arun Kumar are not the kind of names you would
expect to find in Medina. For starters, Islam's second holiest city forbids
entry to people of other faiths. But the reason the two Konkan Railway
Corporation Limited (KRCL) engineers were there didn't have anything to
do with faith. They had jetted down to make a comprehensive survey of
the city that annually hosts over two million Haj pilgrims to offer a
solution to what invariably becomes a logistical nightmare.
Their suggestion: a sky bus, multi-coloured computer controlled
coaches gliding noiselessly underneath a two-lane concrete beam, nine
metres above carbon-monoxide choked city roads. Sounds as futuristic as
Japan's newest mass rapid transit system, but the sky bus, a wholly Indian-designed
concept in urban transport, could be a reality not just on roads in India,
but abroad too. Originating in a country that is yet to design its own
motor car, the concept has been offered to cities all over Asia, including
Medina, Baghdad, Dubai, Singapore and Damascus.
For the moment, though, its a table-top-sized scale model and a moving
computer-generated presentation on the laptop of the man who invented
it, KRCL managing director B. Rajaram. It began as a concept called Sky
Wheels, which Rajaram presented before the World Congress for Railway
Research in Chicago over a decade ago. Now, it's implementation has become
his life's mission. It's a holistic solution to urban life in traffic-choked
cities worldwide, he says.
Rajaram doesn't claim to be pulling rabbits out of his hat. The system
for which the corporation has applied for a global patent isn't the first.
It combines existing monorail and cable car technology with current global
thought and that smaller, lighter coaches operating at lesser lead times
are faster and more efficient transport solutions.
It does sounds too good to be true and the sky bus can carry between 30,000
and one lakh commuters (?) in one direction an hour, zipping by at speeds
of up to 100 km per hour. Two 17.5 metre-long sky bus coaches whisk away
350 passengers in air-conditioned comfort. Four-metre-wide doors allow
up to 600 passengers to board and alight from the two-car train in just
15 seconds. Stations, five metres above ground level, would require platforms
the length of the twin-coach express and can be accessed from the street
by a staircase.
The sky bus could result in huge fuel savings and reduce pollution. At
Rs 45 crore a kilometre, says Rajaram, it's half the cost of an elevated
rail and one fourth the cost of an underground metro. Besides the four
metros, it has been proposed for a dozen other Indian cities, including
Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune, Coimbatore, Lucknow and Panjim, with varying
degrees of success. In Pune, the city administration has stalled a much-needed
flyover because it would occupy a corridor suggested for the sky bus.
The Congress-dominated municipal corporation has made it an election issue
and citizens are near unanimous in their demand for this scheme. The reasons
are clear, over 85 per cent of the vehicles are two-wheelers and traffic
junctions record suspended particulate matter levels three times the permissible
limits.
It's a great concept which combines the capacity of a bus and the pollution-free
effectiveness of a train, says Pune's Municipal
Commissioner Thomas C. Benjamin. Then there's the short
gestation period, it can be implemented within 24 months of the financial
closure of the project, thanks to the use of pre-fabricated columns.
In it's first leg up for the scheme, the the Maharashtra government committed
Rs 100 crore to a Rs 400-crore sky bus project likely to be implemented
on the 9.8-km vehicle-choked Andheri-Ghatkopar road which links Mumbai's
western and eastern suburbs. But security concerns persist, and the fact
that it hasn't been tried anywhere else in the world doesn't help.
After it was unveiled in October 2000, the sky bus concept hit a wall
of scepticism. Even now, sceptics continue to bait the corporation. The
Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) has commissioned
consultants to minutely study the project before giving a final go-ahead.
We have to validate its capacity, technology, costs and safety aspects,
says a senior MMRDA official. Even in Pune, the city administration says
it wants to see another sky bus before starting its own. We want to satisfy
ourselves about its safety features, such as what happens in case of a
power failure or fire, says Benjamin.
No wonder then, that addressing safety features takes up half of
Rajaram's presentation about the sky bus (he's made 52 in 15 months).
He claims it is the safest system of its kind in the world. Cleared by
the railway safety commissioner, it seems to have been designed to withstand
every calamity, save a nuclear attack. A derailed bogie will continue
to hang on since its wheels are enclosed in a concrete box (?), stations
are high above road level and passengers can enter coaches only when two
sets of doors open. In case of an emergency, inflatable slides like those
used in aircraft flip out of the floors, allowing passengers to slide
down to the road in safety.
The real problem then, is attacking the Indian mindset. We're too
enamoured of the West to want to take the first technological step in
anything, says Rajaram wearily. But he has found allies in the scientists
who braved sanctions to design the country's nuclear weapons. Dr A.P.J.
Abdul Kalam recommended that it be implemented as a national priority
and a technical committee that included Dr Anil Kakodkar, Chairman of
the Atomic Energy Commission, cleared its safety aspects. Rajaram, meanwhile,
pursues the sky bus with evangelical zeal.
Partly because he invented it, and partly because it is inextricably linked
with the financial health of KRCIL. The debt-funded corporation has accumulated
losses of nearly Rs 1,000 crore and loses Rs 1 crore every day, the cost
of servicing a Rs 3,500 crore debt incurred to build it. When the promised
freight traffic on its corridor failed to materialise, the corporation
turned to inventions to boost revenue sources. First was a Global Positioning
System (GPS) based anti-collision device; the sky bus came next.
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