Offer railway technologies now, expert

Letter from Railways: Offer technologies now

Indian Railways needs the world’s best technologies from bullet train to sensor-sensitive ticketing systems for managing people on platforms as well as an extensive level of maintenance facilities for wagons, tracks, locomotives/engines, electrical wirings, fiber cables, radar network and  the shopping list continues.

Now is the time to offer these railway technologies to India, writes Devi P. Pande from New Delhi who knows of the railways’ shopping list.

The railway sector has been receiving an increasing number of enquiries from technologists, equipment suppliers and manufacturers in recent years. International railway groups are asking for more information about policies, project plans and implementation process for modernizing the gigantic sector.

The entire development of the railway network will set in motion a monumental change in re-building India. We need everything linked to Internet of Things as well as security sensors to Global Positioning Systems.

Pros and cons are being debated at length with constructive criticism of issues but the development of railway sector will not stop. We have never been this aggressive in discussing railway projects.

At the same time, foreign investors have lined up for projects encouraged by the government’s decision to allow 100 per cent Foreign Direct Investment in the sector.

The sector’s senior executives continues their studies of international systems, and are now working out concepts of how to implement them by adapting to local environment. It will be a mega challenge for railways which transport 18 million passengers and millions of tons of cargoes of mineral resources, perishable produce and commodities every year from rural regions to domestic markets and main ports for exports.

Managing people on platforms will mean breaking the age-old culture and courtesy of “sending or seeing-off, or receiving guests on rail stations”. The best courtesy in India is to send off the love ones, relatives and best friends with a big wave of hands, emotional hugs or the grand welcome for those arriving on stations. This tradition, though well entwined into the society, create unnecessary congestion at platforms. Breaking the courtesy will take a longer time. It will be the biggest people management issue for the railways, which is seeking sensor sensitive ticketing systems especially for controlling crowds.

International wagon manufacturers and leasing companies have already located in India, especially backed by some of the government policies, one of which is for wagon leasing.

Mitsubishi, Alstom, GE, Tatravagonka and Bombardier Transportation have set up bases in India while countries with successful bullet and high speed trains are ready to share technologies and extend long-term soft-loans.

Multi-billion dollars funding and financing are available. The Asian Development Bank, Japan International Cooperation Agency and Germany’s KfW are leading the international financial institutions to support India’s ambitious plans for railways. A number of bullet and high speed trains are on the drawing board.

Technologies

The railway sector is evaluating technologies, almost all of which are available on the shelfs across the world. All of these technologies will be new to India and adjustments will have to be made to suit the local environment, which will lead to a big technology transfer amidst concern about cost management. It will stretch India’s engineering services.

Also, we urgently need technologies for accident-free train services.

Another mammoth challenge will be maintaining and sustaining technologies. Ancillary suppliers and support services are lining up to participate in the massive development. This will add to the many challenges within the railways which has over 200,000 coaches requiring daily maintenance. More and more specialized expertise will be required to manage the rail network, which is expected to have “Royal Class” trains to cater to the lavish life-style of the rich and famous as well as high-spending tourists.

Independent studies, including one by China, will form parts of ever increasing international proposals for the Indian Railways – a multi-billion dollar market by itself within the US1 trillion infrastructure development in the country, seen by investors as the only global place for new lucrative businesses.

The Indian Railways, still rated as one of the largest networks in the world, will clear capacity constraints over the next three years. This will increase railway capacity by four-fold when freight trains starts plying on separate tracks. Capacity constraints has been a common man’s everyday complain for ages, once cleared the railways will focus on managing passenger/mail services.

The concept of Dedicated Freight Corridor (DFC) is being implemented, first of which will be under the Delhi-Mumbai Industrial Corridor Development. The DFC freight trains will run on separate tracks, freeing the routes of passenger trains. Other high speed train DFCs will crisscross the country.

New wagons will be designed to carry goods and mineral loaded trucks from point to point, improving deliveries and cutting on loading and unloading time. It will also remove heavy truck traffic from the roads and highways, clearing traffic pollution.

Being a public service, most of the global railways are not profitable and are not expected to be so. But there are some exceptions, operational expenses of which are covered by governments and or have lucrative revenue from real estate developments within its perimeters.

For this, the Indian Railways are endowed with large tracks of land with potential of developing high-rise properties and logistic parks along some of the central stations in major cities. Strips along the tracks are considered good for solar energy network, a revenue generating avenue.

Though it is hard to work out earnings from such early interlinked real estate cum industry park concepts, the accrued sums could generate another revenue stream. We are looking at every detail within the network which transport 18 million passengers a year on its 9,000 trains made of 200,000 coaches and employs approximately 1.4 million people.

Pande is a railway veteran with four decades in the system. He has studied a number of international systems to help introduce the big change in the network. fii-news.com