The Hindu Business Line : Will RoadRailer keep Railways on track?

The RoadRailer, built by a Pune company, can be operated on road as well as rail without transhipment, and has unique features that eliminate the need for a crane for loading and unloading containers.

THE new Railway Board Chairman, while addressing his maiden press conference recently, emphasised the need for bringing down the operating ratio of the Indian Railways to 90 per cent within next two years.

The ratio, 98.1 per cent in 2001-02, was brought down to 92.5 per cent in 2002-03. The ratio for the current year however is projected to be higher than the last year.

One way of reducing the operating ratio would be to reduce costs. However, no one knows it better than the Rail Board Chairman himself that improving finances through steady reduction in costs is difficult, if not impossible, in the present situation. The other way of improving finances could be by augmenting earnings. The Railways is already exploring various opportunities as to how to add to its earnings.

As it is, the road sector has significantly stepped up its share in the country's total movement of goods traffic in past half a century or so, largely at the expense of the Railways whose share has steadily declined during the period.

With the government's aggressive programme to improve the major highways, the competition will only become intense with the road sector, which will ensure safety, speed and ease of use for larger vehicles.

As new and better roads are built and the corporate sector starts investing in large modern long-haul trucks, the rail transportation will be hard-pressed to stay competitive.

Right now the competition is only with eight- or 10-tonne capacity vehicles (with the inevitable overloading). However, all this is about to change. Thanks to economic liberalisation, the foreign vehicle manufacturers have started manufacturing higher-capacity commercial vehicles in the country.

Assuming the average new truck capacity is 25 tonnes, as Mr David Burns, an international expert on rail-road transportation, has pointed out, then by 2014 the Indian Railways will no longer be seeing an annual growth in traffic. If 60-tonne capacity vehicles are allowed, then by 2009 the Railways will be losing traffic and by 2014 it will be losing at the rate of 6.5 per cent a year.

Only two countries allow 60-tonne capacity trucks — South Africa and Sweden. As a result, the freight traffic in South African Railways comprises only iron ore and coal for exports while the Swedish Railways carries only people.

The Indian Railways therefore should start exploring the use of specialised railcars as a means to optimise the carriage of goods. There can be various types of specialised railcars such as freight cars for ship containers and trailers, automotive cars, centre partition cars, covered hopper cars, specialised steel cars for carrying coils, box cars and the RoadRailer.

Right now the Railways does not have commodity/customer specific freight cars to cater to a market that is increasingly emerging important.

While the technologies for other specialised cars are yet to make a dent in the Indian market, three prototype RoadRailer units have been built by a Pune-based company in collaboration with the US firm that first developed RoadRailer in the mid-1980s and then patented the technology.

The advantage of a RoadRailer is that it can be operated on road as well as rail without transshipment. It has some unique features that eliminate the need for a crane for loading and unloading of containers.

The prototypes developed for Indian operation can take one 40-ft or two 20-ft ISO containers each chassis with a maximum payload of 27 tonnes. As many as 50 units can be accommodated on one rake. It can also have any commodity or customer specific body designed built on the same chassis, such as AutoRailer for automobiles and reefer van for perishables.

Despite successful oscillation testing by the Railways' Research Design and Standards Organisation (RDSO) in partnership with Container Corporation of India (Concor) and a few zonal railways, RoadRailer as a concept is yet to find acceptance in the corridors of the Rail Bhawan. This is presumably because of the high cost of the equipment.

True, the long-term return on high initial investment on the equipment will be substantial. But at a time when the Railways is finding it difficult to mobilise funds even to replace the old wagon fleet, the decision of large investment on new equipment is not going to be easy.

There is another point. The success of RoadRailer will also depend on the commitment of the Railways on ensuring scheduled, dedicated and faster transit. The Railways has core competence in this area but it needs to establish this in order to convince other prospective investors and the users.

The Railways can encourage private logistics operators to invest in RoadRailer rolling stock. However, in either case the Railways is not forthcoming.

No wonder the Pune-based company is keeping its fingers crossed. After having spent a large amount of money on the development of prototypes and waited long for a favourable decision of the Railways,it now only hopes that all its efforts will not be in vain.

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