Policy assessment for station developmentin Indian Railways

Abstract

Indian Railways is a mammoth organization providing transport solutions to passengers and freight traffic for about 165 years now. IR’s Stations are main points of contact for the customers of railways-more so for passenger trains. While the world progressed, facilities at stations over IR remained largely stagnant till recent past. Multitude of factors like remarkable progress in quality of services in other modes of transport, rising awareness of citizens leading to rising expectations and overall technological progress have led to huge pressure on railways to change gears and undertake large-scale improvements in facilities at its stations. All this has resulted into the current station development project undertaken by Indian Railways. Improvement in station facilities is not a new concept in IR. However, upgradation of facilities and infrastructure at such a large scale is an entirely new exercise. Hitherto, the changes in facilities used to be incremental and almost always lagged the demands from the users. Large works requiring major investments used to be proposed year after year and after a lot of iterations only very few made it to the list of works shortlisted by the Railway Board, the apex level decision making body of the ministry of railways. However, the rail budget 2015-2016, in a welcome departure from the past, announced the intent of the government to take up station development in an entirely new manner. Earliest attempts to improve facilities at stations were modest and relied on low-key improvements on a minimum essential amenities’ basis. Based on passenger earnings and footfalls at the stations IR categorized its stations in seven categories. Depending upon its classification in the list of stations thus developed, IR used to take up improvement works from Minimum essential to recommended to desirable level. This system touched all stations and is the original method of facilities upgradation at stations. However, it was felt that this wasn’t adequate for many important stations. This led IR to choose stations with highest commercial earnings and improve status via variants of similar schemes called Adarsh station, model station and Modern station. Then came the idea of exploiting idle land and airspace otherwise lying utilized around stations. The first such method was called World class stations model. This however didn’t result into much. The recent initiative of the government of Station Development project taken up on the concept of Transit Oriented Development is the most comprehensive and largest such initiative taken anywhere in the world.The station development project started with inviting “ideas” from willing parties to develop stations and submit the best commercial and technical offer using what IR called the Modified Swiss Challenge method. This method didn’t result into much success for IR. Apart from the muted investment climate in the country in general, the terms set by the government for the stations were too strict and rigid. The government quickly understood this and started offering stations on EPC and PPP basis. Additionally, government increased the lease period for the station from 45 years to 99 years apart from other terms which were eased. IR has mandated its public sector unit IRSDC to singlehandedly steer the station development project. IRSDC has since allied with NBCC through RLDA to develop 10 stations lying in the smart city projects of the MoUD. Apart from this IRSDC has engaged private developers for development of Habibganj (HBJ) and Gandhinagar (GNC)stations on PPP and EPC basis respectively. These two stations are likely to be ready for commercial commissioning in first half of 2019. Although IR has shown genuine intentions to develop its stations on world class standards, the actions haven’t borne much fruits. A full-fledged directorate of station development is working at the railway board along with three subsidiary companies of IR to implement this mammoth project. However as of December 2018 only two stations of HBJ and GNC are in any stage of civil progress. All the other stations are in very early stage and obviously not going as per the ambitious plans of IR. There are many reasons why this may have happened. However, the paper has limited its scope on drawing lessons from the current pool of knowledge and experience from the station development project. It turns out that while the busiest railway stations located in mega city hubs have always attracted attention of IR for exploitation of commercial land and air space, there are many stations which are located in prime city space yet due to operational issues don’t handle much railway traffic. These stations can be good starting points for real state development. Stations like Gandhigram and Asarva in Ahmedabad, Bhaktinagar in Rajkot are examples of such highly underutilized prime land parcels lying utterly underutilized as measured against their potential. Examples abound of success stories of stations in advanced nations like Japan and USA where stations which appear to be “underground cities” were initially like today’s stations in India. But real state growth on these stations has totally covered these stations and what is apparent today is only pipelines carrying tunnels of train-tracks seeping out of these underground cities.Having studied the mixed story of station development over IR it is clear that the present approach of IR on station development, despite being well-intentioned has only achieved limited success. With rising migration towards cities and increasing role of transportation in development of economy it is utmost essential that the railway stations act as the nodules of development in metropolitan areas. Stations which are already very congested due to haphazard city growth around them can not take any further trains as infrastructure in and around them can not support any such growth. To absorb any rise in railway traffic at stations there needs to be a matching road network in the “catchment area” of the stations. Also, the transportation of future is not only about providing boarding deboarding services and modern lifestyle services are going to be integral part of station services. What is needed is a simple ABC analysis of stations based on passenger footfalls and then devise a rigorous selection method to deploy precious resources for taking up station development projects. Stations which are already too congested need to be divested of some of their trains by looking around and shifting some services to nearby stations. Then there is this second category of stations which are in prime commercial land but have either not been developed due to a nearby large station or due to low railway traffic there. Such stations need to be the topmost priority for station development. This category will also include stations which are coming up due to development of High-Speed Railway network and present a great opportunity for commercial utilization. Stations which are in medium and small towns can not support such large infrastructure projects and they should attract proportionate investment. This framework can be expanded to conclusively delineate the kind of commercial facilities which are viable and feasible for each category of station. It is expected that this framework will be helpful in facilitating a structured approach to station development.