There is no sustainable alternative to mass-rapid transport of rail commuters in Kerala other than Silver Line — the 530-km Thiruvananthapuram-Kasaragod semi-high-speed rail corridor, for which pre-investment activities are under way, Kerala Railway Development Corporation Ltd. (KRDCL) managing director V. Ajith Kumar said.

The ₹63,941-crore greenfield project spearheaded by the agency was worth the expense since the sole and nearest alternative was to lay third and fourth tracks parallel to the existing rails. This was next to impossible since thousands of houses and other buildings stood in close proximity to the tracks. On the contrary, the Silver Line alignment (from Kochuveli in Thiruvananthapuram), would pass mostly through open spaces and could be built with lest disturbance to buildings, he said.

Problematic curves

Moreover, trains would be able to operate at much the same speed as now, even if two additional tracks were laid parallel to the existing corridor. This was because they would eventually have to reduce speed to less than 100 kmph at 260 (major curves) of the around 700 curves along the corridor. Keeping this in mind, the Silver Line alignment had been envisaged as largely greenfield (undeveloped areas) on the Thiruvananthapuram-Tirur stretch. It would proceed parallel to the existing tracks on much of the Tirur-Kasaragod stretch, except in curves where they would take a deviation, Mr. Ajith Kumar added.

The fare too would be competitive, vis-a-vis personalised travel modes such as cars the operational cost of which was around ₹10 per km and would still have to commute through congested and accident-prone highways. The per-km fare to commute by Silver Line, which would operate at an average speed of 200 kmph, would be just ₹2.75 per km. Thus, a family of four commuting by car or semi-high-speed rail would have to spend much the same amount, while saving on time — four hours as compared to about 14 hours by road.

Apart from lessening congestion on highways, the proposed rail corridor would also cater to 480 lorries a day, further decongesting highways. This is achieved by the rolling in-rolling out (RoRo transit) of laden/empty lorries. This would in turn considerably lessen the turnaround time of each return trip, bringing about optimal utility, while also lessening pollution, congestion, accidents, and wear and tear of highways.

Aimed at enabling higher speed, the Silver Line rail would have standard-gauge rails, used in most countries. This was because trains could touch a maximum of only 160-kmph speed through broad-gauge rails.

Concern

The Kerala Sastra Sahitya Parishad reiterated its concern over the possible environmental fallout of the project. “Already, much of Kerala has been encountering severe flooding every monsoon. We cannot afford to have a new railway line dividing waterbodies, wetlands, and paddy fields,” said Radhan K., State general secretary.