Romancing the Railways: Why Bansal should focus on metros

In an evocative passage in his book Maximum City, writer Suketu Mehta describes the early morning scene in suburban railway stations across Mumbai - and, in fact, across virtually every other metropolitan city in India.

“If you are late for work in Mumbai and reach the station just as the train is leaving the platform, don’t despair,” counsels Mehta. “You can run up to the packed compartments and find many hands unfolding like petals to pull you on board… They know that your boss might yell at you or cut your pay if you miss this train… ‘Come on board,’ they say. ‘We’ll adjust.’”

Mehta’s passage is, of course, intended as a metaphor for Mumbai’s accommodating nature: even commuters packed liked sardines in a tin can and do make room for that extra passenger. But it is in equal measure an overly romanticised portrayal of the ordeal of suburban train travel in the “maximum city” - and in other metros where urban mass transit systems are literally bursting at the seams.

The reality of suburban train travel in Indians cities is far less inspirational: there is no romance in being one of 5,000 sweaty commuters packed into a nine-coach train that was intended to carry about 1800 passengers. There is nothing evocative about commuters clinging to the footboard of speeding trains, and falling - or, in extreme cases, being pushed - to their death. And yet this is the lived experience of millions of passengers in our cities, the daily ritual they dread but have no option but to undertake.

If there’s one thing that I wish today’s Railway Budget - for all its utter irrelevance ( as Firstpost has argued earlier ) - would focus on, it is on improving metro rail systems, particularly frequency of train service and an enhancement of safety and comfort levels.

For those given to a romantic bent of mind, the Indian Railways itself is, of course, in itself a metaphor for India - with its Kashmir-to-Kanyakumari network. And yet, without prejudice to the rigours of long-distance train travel in India ( which this columnist encapsulates succinctly ), the Railways Ministry will have a far greater impact for every crore of rupees spent by improving suburban railway systems.

In fact, Metro systems in cities should be so designed as to induce “people like us” to give up driving to work in bumper-to-bumper traffic and instead switch to public transport facilities, in the way it happens in virtually every world city. Such a middle-class migration can be encouraged through a system of “area licensing” that efficient metropolitan administrations in other world cities have implemented, according to public policy experts who have studied 15 metro systems around the world from Tokyo to Santiago.

Of course, that requires holistic planning of urban development, and a radical departure in the way financing of Metro systems is considered. From the experience of other world cities, this requires the vertical separation of development: that is, the government provides the basic infrastructure - railway stations, platforms, tracks, signalling and so on. In the best models around the world, the railway operation  is itself privatised: a company can get in its own rolling stock - like train cars - and its own staff and operate it on a day-to-day basis.

The government’s initial investment can be more than recovered by leveraging property values along the railway lines. The company that operates the rail system can recover its costs from the fares, without their being subsidised by the government. In other models, as for instance in Hong Kong, the private MTR Corporation uses its own finances to develop the railways, including the construction of the system, and to operate it. But the government gives the corporation premium land, where it can build shopping complexes in and around the station concourse, and collect a rent. In fact, the MTR’s profits on its property holdings are substantially higher than on its railway operations.

Such a model would also be premised on disincentivising (by levying a toll) the use of private vehicles in central business districts in cities, which are typically the most congested areas with the most number of office complexes.  One pillar of that would also be fuel price deregulation, which would address the issue of subsidy reforms as well.

It is only when metropolitan mass transit systems can persuade “people like us” to forsake our cars and switch to public transport by offering both greater safety and comfort of service - and yet not be subsidised - that they can be said to be truly successful. That would bring down the walls of the “economic ghettoes” of our cities that divide those who travel in the crush of our suburban trains, and those who cope with bumper-to-bumper traffic on choked roads.

To me, there’s far more romance in that than in seeing sardines in a tin-can make room for one more out of commuter compassion. …