So its that time of the year again, expectations from the budget abt announcements on suburban rail and no doubt madam FM did say few words on the issue but also left a lot for speculation. And then the news items abt the train link to the trumpet interchange near KIA that has started some invigorated discussions on social media.
In the absence of UMTA there are a few golden rules to play with. The prime among that is as below:
Understand a problem well to fit a solution
However everyone including the authorities are trying to do just the opposite. All are trying to fit a solution to a problem. Metro/Suburban rail are all solutions in this context and the problem being airport connectivity. So lets try see a bit into the problem.
Airport is a destination for two types of travelers. Daily commuters who work in and around the airport and the flyers themselves. Daily commuters look for reliable low cost transit option and are not much bothered about frequency or comforts. However air travelers will look for good frequency and comforts, cost is not a factor for them
Taking the airtravellers only, the current projections with the new terminal opening is about 1.7 lakh passengers per day and considering half of them using the train service it will be about 80,000 passengers.
However daily commuter number will be much higher considering staff who work at the airport. The KIADB Hardware techpark and Aerospace park among other industries coming up around the airport also need reliable commute option..
Problem | Metro | Suburban Rail |
Fast mass transit option | yes (if limited stops) | yes |
Reliable mass transit option | yes | yes |
High frequency | yes | No |
Low cost of implementation | No | Yes |
Fast time for implementation | No | Yes |
Affordable ticket cost (daily commute) | No | Yes |
Provides safety and security | Yes | Yes |
Comforts for air travellers (luggage) | Yes | Yes (less than metro) |
So basically daily commuters cannot be expected to take a metro line everyday. They will need a suburban rail option.
Airtravellers will prefer a metro solution. The question is if the number of air travellers who plan to take the metro large enough to justify the heavy implementation cost involved. If the answer is yes, then we shd go for it..else the plan needs to be dropped immediately.
So who will do the survey and plan for it is a different question, because we did have a similar 'survey' few years ago to support BETL bridge on Hosur road and we all know what a disaster it has turned out to be financially !
ಪ್ರತಿಕ್ರಿಯೆಗಳು
Nice Analysis