To a grinding halt!

The first PPP metro rail to be operational in India vindicates what some top experts have said all along as technical faults and financial difficulties have put a spanner in the works of what should have been a shining example. Delhi’s Airport Express will go down in business schools as a classic case study of the breakdown between the two Ps in a project, writes Rai Umraopati Ray.

The Airport Express Line in the national capital, the fastest Metro link in the country shut its services since July 8 for an indefinite period as the Delhi Airport Metro Express Pvt Ltd (DAMEPL), the Reliance Infrastructure (R-Infra)-led consortium that operates the line, claims that running trains on the elevated section of the alignment is a safety hazard. Barely a year into operation, the high-speed metro line is said to have a technical fault in the civil structure on the overhead section of the corridor, which DAMEPL brought to the notice of Delhi Metro, the Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO) and Railways were also informed. Services on the corridor had to be stopped and resumed by August, but the Airport Express line has not resumed services.

Inaugurated on 23 February 2011, the Airport Express line runs on a public- private partnership (PPP) model. Delhi Airport Metro Express Pvt Ltd, a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) between R-Infra (95 per cent stake) and CAF, Spain (5 per cent stake) was created to implement the Airport Metro Express project on a build-own-operate-transfer (BOOT) basis. The consortium bagged the project from the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) in 2008 through competitive bidding and awarded on a 30-year concession period.

The total length of the network is 23 km with six stations enroute–New Delhi, Shivaji Stadium, Dhaula Kuan, Delhi Aerocity, IGI Airport and Dwarka Sector 21. Five stations are underground while Dhaula Kuan station is elevated. Apart from the civil structure per­taining to stations, tunnels and viaducts, the entire pro­ject has been developed, financed, constructed, operated and maintained by the concessionaire. Though R-Infra has completed the project in a record time of just 30 months from the signing of the concession agreement, the country’s first PPP metro project has had a rough ride over the past 16 months after it began operations.

Bearing with technical faults

First, the opening of the line was delayed by over five months, then the corridor could not meet specifications of running trains at a speed of 120 kmph and a 20-hour train service schedule. Early this year, the speed of trains was reduced from 105 kmph to 80 kmph after rail clips broke at many points on the 22 km corridor. Finally, inspection showed that the ‘neoprene bearings’ that clasp the pier cap with the girder were becoming “warped”. Sources say the rubber bearings that are sup­posed to be cuboidal in shape developed curvatures. This problem is attributed to poor quality of casting and has led to apprehensions of the girder and piers developing cracks. At some places, wide cracks were said to have already developed in the piers.

According to an official of DAMEPL, a few weeks before the services were shut, they had to reduce the speed of trains, which run at 105 kmph to as low as 15 kmph in some stretches. The speed of the trains was curbed after the DMRC asked DAMEPL to start moni­toring the line as it feared a deterioration of the infra­structure. Simultaneously, DMRC had asked consultants Shirish Patel and Associates (SPA) to carry out an inspection of the line.

He further states, “In the second half of the month, SPA filed its report pointing out serious defects in piers, pier caps, bearings and girders on the elevated stretch of the corridor. The elevated stretch of the line, spanning nearly six km, starts after the Shivaji Stadium station and continues up to Delhi Aerocity. At one place, a slab under a girder appeared to have been dislodged, SPA’s report said.”

DAMEPL had been slowing trains down to prevent more damage to the civil structure. But it shut down the line for an indefinite period after SPA’s report warned that derailment was a possibility considering the nature of defects. According to SPA’s report, there are cracks in most piers, concrete portions are missing in pier caps, at least 250 bearings out of a total of 2,100 on the line have serious flaws and several girders are twisted, damaged or bent.

“This is cause for serious concern and should be examined without further loss of time,” the report said. “The main concern will be that of possible derailment… We can only infer that the margin in factor of safety has been encroached upon.”

The flip side of PPP

However, the sudden decision to close the line is also being seen as another chapter in the ongoing dispute between the concessionaire and DMRC. Not long ago, DMRC chief Mangu Singh had come down heavily on DAMEPL for its lacklustre performance, saying there were many “shortcomings” in the way the Airport Metro Express was being run, especially the frequency of trains, speed on the line and service conditions. At the time, DAMEPL had said speeds had come down to acco­mmodate “checks and balances to prevent any unto­ward incidences”. In June, matters seem to have escalated with the concessionaire conducting an independent asse­ss­ment and inspection of the elevated section of the line which starts after Shivaji stadium and goes on till a tunnel prior to the Delhi Aerocity station. The station on the elevated stretch is Dhaula Kuan.

According to reports, with DMRC refusing to take the blame, the ministry decided to set up a joint inspe­ction team to go into the defects, the Urban Development Ministry decided to set up a joint inspection team to go into the defects. “A committee comprising officials from the Indian Railways, Delhi Metro and R-Infra is going into the nature of defects”, said Urban Development Secretary Sudhir Krishna to break the deadlock situation as nobody seems to take the responsibility of the so called shoddy work.

At the July 2 meeting, the DMRC chief claimed they had already repaired the ‘worst’ of the faulty bearings and would fix the rest in 10 days. He insisted that the responsibility for keeping the infrastructure in ship-shape condition was the operator’s, DAMEPL, and it was its job to undertake the repairs. “It is the respo­nsibility of the operator to keep the entire assets safe and in good working condition. The defects were not indi­cated at the time DAMEPL took charge of the line,” Singh said in the meeting.

R-Infra’s retort: R-Infra CEO Sumit Banerjee hit back, arguing that they had a “different risk perception” compared to DMRC and did not want to put passengers in danger. “There was a probability of derailment, and we would not like to run the line without rectification,” Banerjee said, according to the meeting’s minutes reported in the media. He also hit out at DMRC’s repair work, which he called “cosmetic”.

Another reason being attributed to this fiasco is that the Airport Express service has been closed for unspe­cified time due to financial loses. The R-Infra-led com­pany is understood to be suffering losses as it was not able to reach its intended targets in terms of profit and ridership. According to media reports, the DMRC chief had written a letter to Urban Development Minister, Kamal Nath, castigating R-Infra for trying to bail out of the project. However, the concessionaire has denied this point by point refuting all reports of trying to bail out of the project. In response, R-Infra’s CEO had written to Nath explaining the issues in detail, stating that “safety and operational economics cannot be bracketed together”.

Denying allegations that economic considerations had prompted the concessionaire to shut down services on the high speed Metro line, Banerjee accuses DMRC of playing with safety concerns. The letter says, “We have restrained ourselves so far from disclosing that DMRC had given us in writing that the Metro corridor (with severe civil structure defects) was safe to continue to run trains, and it is actually DMRC who tried to force us to take undue risks to life and property.” The scathing letter further states, “Contractually, there is not an iota of doubt that DMRC (and more specifically the director-works) is accountable to us (the concessionaire) and more significantly to DMRC’s stakeholders and the citizens of Delhi, for this shoddy quality of execution.” Banerjee has also accused DMRC of “painting a collective decision of suspension of train services in a motivated colour”.

In its defence, the DMRC had issued a statement refuting the allegations. “The moment faults were no­ticed in the clips on the railway tracks, the necessary speed restrictions were imposed by DAMEPL and the required repair work was carried out without hampering Metro operations during the non-operational hours in the night time. DMRC never forced or instructed the concessionaire to adopt any particular track system for the Airport Express corridor,” DMRC said in a statement.

On the concessionaire’s accusation that it was forced to opt for Vossloh, DMRC said, “Initially the conce­ssionaire suggested the ‘Single Fast Clip (SFC)’ system to DMRC, which was not found suitable for a high speed corridor. Subsequently DMRC suggested four track sys­tems to the concessionaire, which are – RHEDA 2000, VIPA, VANGAURD and Double Fast Clip. Apart from RHEDA 2000, all the other systems were from Pandrol, which is a rival company of the German firm Vossloh.”
“As the entire process was taking a lot of time, which could have impacted the eventual commissioning of the line, DMRC suggested the RHEDA 2000 track system, as it was already approved by the Research Designs and Standards Organisation (RDSO) for the Railways,” it added. DMRC wants investigation into the clip failure, pointing out that so far only the clips that were used on the underground section have developed faults.

On the issue of civil work defects, DMRC pinned the blame on the concessionaire and said Reliance Infra did not adhere to the agreement signed. Reliance Infra was supposed to carry out regular inspections and monitor the civil structures, DMRC official said. “However, timely inspections were not carried out despite repeated reminders from DMRC. Had these defects been noticed and pointed out earlier, then the repair work could have been carried out without hampering the Metro operations,” the DMRC claimed.

The future of Airport Express

The only positive aspect of this front is that the government recently said that it proposes to re-start the Airport Metro train at the earliest which had an average ridership of around 17,000 passengers per day till it was shut down for repairs. “However, it will be done by DAMEPL, the concessionaire and operator of the Airport Metro Express [line],” Minister of State for Urban Development Saugata Roy said in a written reply in Rajya Sabha. “The average ridership of the Metro Express Line was about 17,000 passengers per day as on the date of shut down of train services,” he said. Roy said that prima facie, the investigations show that there are defects in civil works, “such as crushing of grout material above and below bearings, cracks and shifting of bearings at many locations. In addition, certain cracks and twist in some of the girders have also been noticed.”

No doubt that the whole episode has put a big question mark on the future of PPP especially in metro projects, its durability and viability. It is a proven fact that public-private partnerships in metro projects have not been successful the world over. There should have lot of checks and balances, precautions on part of both the parties.

As Vivian Fernandes, a popular blogger writes, “Without sincerity of purpose, PPP infrastructure projects will have the possibility of privatising gains at public expense. Given the level of morality in our governance system, strong covenants will be of little help. Unscrupulous private players (and this is no insinuation against R-Infra) can induce officials and ministers to renege on commitments and walk out of a contract. The airport metro has been working for just about a year. It is too early for the operator to throw up their hands. It must operate the line on a ‘best endeavour’ basis. If after a couple of years it is found that the line is genuinely unviable, the government could re-auction it to the one who seeks the least subsidy.”