Kerala Silverline Project: How KRDCL and Systra are gaming the media and the political system

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#KRDCL and #SYSTRA have so far been allowed to get away with gross underestimation of cost and overestimation of traffic potential

“Yesterday I had a long conversation with a senior journalist of a leading Malayalam daily about the Kerala Silverline Project. It throws light on how KRDCL and Systra are gaming the media and the political system”, writes Alok Kumar Verma, retired chief engineer of Northern Railway.

Verma writes, It is not hard to see why the dream of building a high speed line in Kerala will turn into a nightmare because of professional dishonesty and incompetence of top officials of KRDCL and Systra, who have so far been allowed to get away with gross underestimation of cost and overestimation of traffic potential.

They must be questioned about the validity of their alignment which has been prepared using Google Earth data, and the mind-boggling traffic projection despite the fact that most stations will be in the outskirts and there is acute urban sprawl in the region, he said.

They must also be questioned about the lack of transparency in the scheme of real-estate development at the stations and elsewhere along the alignment. Verma said that from the indepth examination that was done while preparing the Preliminary Feasibility Report of March 2019, he can say with some certainty that the project cost will exceed INR one lakh crore and traffic projection is likely to be less than fifteen thousand.

It will undoubtedly be a colossal waste of public money.

If land acquisition is really such a big problem in Kerala then a better option would be to upgrade the existing line via Alappuzha to 120-130 kmph by realigning and running tilting trains at about 160 kmph.

That will reduce journey time from Thiruvananthapuram to Kochi to two hours and Thiruvananthapuram to Kasaragod to about five hour, and the project cost will be about INR 20,000 crore, including cost of land, Verma said.

Verma is very firm on this issue. He says, If the #StateGovt and #RlyBd still wants to build a 200 kmph line then it must be on #BroadGauge and must cross most of the cities near city center. For this a detailed examination is given in the Preliminary Feasibility Report of March’19. Anybody can call for that report.

There is an interesting parallel with the Kashmir Rail-Link Project:

Multiple foreign experts and agencies are involved in the #KashmirRailLink project. But when the Delhi high court appointed Expert Committee with Dr Sreedharan as its chairman sat down to decide whether the alignment should be changes, they found more merit in what the then chief engineer, N. Rly Alok Kumar Verma said than in what the army of foreign consultants that #NorthernRailway and #RailwayBoard produced before the Committee.

The Committee, which had three nominees of Railway Board, unanimously agreed with Verma that the entire alignment should be changed, and the alignment that he had developed should be adopted. For full appreciation of the significance of this recommendation in 2014, it should be noted that by that time Railway had spent about INR 6,000 crore and work had been going on at snail’s pace for 12 years.

“So prejudiced people of media (who have been singing praise of the handling of this project by KRDCL in the last two months) should not argue just for the sake of arguing”, Verma said.

#indianrailways #KeralaEcology #KeralaTransport #KeralaFloods #KeralaSilverlineProject #railtechnology #KeralaEnvironment #GodsOwnCountry #railwayengineering #railwayprojects #RailwayAlignments #keralaGovernment