The Himachal Pradesh government’s deal with Belarusbased Skyway Technologies for introducing the world’s first suspended skyway transpor t system in Dharamsala has run into controversy over the credentials of the company as well as the suitability of the mode of transport for the region.
Critics within and outside the Congress government have slammed it over the decision to sign a memorandum of understanding with a company with no operational projects anywhere in the world and raised serious doubts over the safety and viability of the `250-crore project.
Skyway transport system envisages suspended carbon-fibre cars moving at high speed on steel rails.
“There is no clarity on why this Belarus company was chosen,“ said a state minister, who did not wish to be identified. “The company did not share with the government any feasibility report of any study a must in projects like this on how the project will be executed.“ The CM’s adviser and principal aide TG Negi told ET that only the state urban development minister Sudhir Sharma could respond to media queries since it was his project. However, Sharma remained unavailable for comment despite several emails, text messages and attempts to reach him on the phone. At least three state ministers said they were planning to raise the issue of the skyway project with the chief minister but were hesitant because “Sharma is considered quite close to the Raja (CM Virbhadra Singh)“. According to the website of Skyway Technologies, the company will use an elevated route technology called `string transport’.
It says the company is in talks with Australia and Turkey , apart from India, but does not list any operational projects.
Experts said that an earlier prototype of the same technology was tested in Russia but the project was dropped after an assessment by the State Railways University in Moscow in 2008 found that the project was “not viable and unsafe“. The report said that the string rail technology is filled with a “large number of system defects and (is) almost unrealistic because it doesn’t provide an even path for the traffic“. “Passengers are at altitude from the ground level.Destruction of any string leads to deaths. The system is associated with great risk,“ it said. Last year, a Russian government panel that evaluated the technology called it innovative but only in theory .State government officials, however, said the Dharamsala mu nicipal corpora tion had already approved the techni cal pro posal of the project and would soon start tendering to execute the project in public-private partnership mode.As per the proposal, they said, a 15.4 m suspended skyway track will be constructed in the first phase with 15 stations. Urban development minister Sharma, MLA from Dharamsala, had said at the time of signing the MoU in May , months ahead of the upcoming assembly election, that the project would be operational within three years. The minister had recently visited Belarus to meet the company officials. BJP leader Kishan Kapoor, a fourtime former MLA from Dharamsala and former transport minister of the state said, “The smart city of Dharmasala cannot have a corrupt foundation in the skyway . I would request the Congress government to tell me why a Belarus company was chosen to implement the skyway project over Swiss and other companies?
Why should the money of the poor people of Himachal be spent on a company with questionable credentials?“ A state government official said on condition of anonymity ,“At least the audit reports of the companies that the government is signing an MoU with should be made available so that it is made clear that we are not falling prey to any ponzi scheme.“
The skyway companies
A search on the projects of Skyway group of companies on the internet threw up plenty of computer generated drawings, smart graphics on futuristic technologies and advertisements asking people to invest in the company .
Although the string technology found its way to many countries in the past few years, no project with “skyway“ in the company name took off anywhere. Companies such as Euroasian Rail Skyway System, American Rail Skyway System, African Rail Skyway System, Australian and Oceanic Rail Skyway System registered in various parts of the world got dissolved over the past two years.
Skyway Technologies founder Anatoly Yunitskiy , on his personal website, calls himself “an engineer, the author and general designer of fundamentally new kind of transport systems called Unitskiy String Transport that is being introduced to the market under the brand name SkyWay“. He says his motto behind conceiving the skyway is “to save the planet“. According to him, a largescale capitalisation of skyway transport was launched in 2014 using crowd funding, which makes it unique. “Very soon we will get the first profit, which will be a deserved reward for the efforts of those who worked to create the technology and the belief in the project of those who became its investors,“ he says on the website. Victor Baburin, the company’s deputy general director for business development told ET, “Skyway Technologies Co (Belarus) has been up and running since 2015.“
He categorically denied being associated with the Skyway companies that have dissolved in other continents.
In 2014 a skyway project was planned by a Belarus company in Lithuania but it was cancelled within months due to suspected financial fraud. The Bank of Lithuania had then warned investors of “unidentified individuals inviting Lithuanian residents to invest in nextgeneration string transport by acquiring on-line shares of the private limited company“.
In an emailed response to ET’s queries, Baburin termed the Lithuanian episode “anti-Russian hysteria“ of the Lithuanian government. “The government of Lithuania is very concerned about Russian (and Belarus) companies making business in Lithuania because of anti-Russian hysteria since 2013,“ he wrote.
Without answering a question on whether the company had any working project anywhere in the world, he said, “Our technology now is at the final stage of certification on our main project EcoTechnoPark. In India future projects (are being) planned to be implemented in collaboration with local engineering companies and contractors of highest quality to ensure safety of way structure and rolling stock.“ On its website, however, the company has clearly stated that its main aim is “to create an operating model of SkyWay technology EcoTechnoPark that will become a starting point to transfer SkyWay string transport from the category of a `theoretically developed project’ to the category of a `well-selling product’“.
What do the experts say?
Former Railway Board chairman Vivek Sahai said safety is a big issue in such projects, so it has to be made clear as to which organisation will certify the safety of a skyway system.“And ropeways can carry only 360 people in an hour while the Delhi Metro can carry up to 20,000 people. So it is expensive, too, and suited only for tourists, not locals. I would say roads would work best in the hilly states of a country like India,“ he said.
Former railways minister and Trinamool Congress leader Dinesh Trivedi strongly pitched for Swiss technology for such projects. “It is a no-brainer as only the Swiss companies have a track record in creating safe skyways and string transport systems. At the most, we could even consider Japanese technology, as these are niche fields and only companies with an impeccable repute in running and maintaining projects should be trusted,“ he said.
Trivedi too argued against the skyway as a mode of transport for commuters. “ A ropeway or a form of sky transport can be at best used for adventure or tourist purposes in our country . As a serious form of transport skyway transport needs to go through multiple layers of analysis, given the possibility of accidents,“ he said. Sanjay Gupta, who heads the Konkan Railway, where string rail transport was introduced several years ago but discontinued owing to feasibility issues, said new systems of city transport, especially based on new technology from foreign countries, need to be studied carefully before they are introduced in India.
“Skyway transport system will have space for much fewer people than a metro rail, so it has never been considered a good option for India. In a country like ours, it is always better to go for tried and tested systems like the metro. The metro also has regulatory mechanisms and bodies governing it.Will the new systems have one, is also a crucial concern?“ he said.
Transport expert Sudhir Badami said it was time India focused on research on its own technologies than relying on others. “I remember in Konkan Railway , around 2003-2005, we had started research on string rail transport but it was discontinued.Had the research continued, we could have had our own skyway systems by now.“ International deals in Indian transport are nothing new, though, Badami said. “We have had Austrian trawlers and Chinese buses here. In the international market, there is often lobbying that works out deals at various levels. We must just see how much the country is benefiting out it, and that safety of passengers is not compromised,“ he said.