Delay in launching first lot of Water Metro ferries irks Kochi islanders, stakeholders

KMRL has already missed out on the November-January peak tourist season when substantial number of foreign and domestic tourists converged in Kerala

The inordinate delay in launching the first lot of ferries of the ₹747-crore Water Metro project, despite the Cochin Shipyard handing over seven ferries to Kochi Metro Rail Limited (KMRL), has irked islanders and other stakeholders who have been yearning for a fast and reliable ferry service to mainland Kochi.

The metro agency has already missed out on the November-January peak tourist season when substantial number of foreign and domestic tourists converged in Kerala. Many of them came to visit the Kochi-Muziris Biennale that is on in West Kochi.

The first lot of 23 hundred-passenger ferries, from among the intended fleet of 78 vessels, was expected to be ready for operations by 2020-end. Many factors, including difficulties in procuring components and travel curbs during the pandemic, played spoilsport with the roll out of the hybrid ferries that rely mostly on electric power.

Even as uncertainty looms over the operationalising of the seven ferries in the High Court-Vypeen and Vyttila-Kakkanad waterway corridors, agencies like State Water Transport Department (SWTD) are bracing up to ensure that they get their share of commuters, by inducting modern catamaran vessels that adhere to Indian Register of Shipping (IRS) norms. It is also readying to take the plunge into purse-friendly, tourist-boat operations in Kochi, buoyed by the success of similar initiatives in Alappuzha and Kollam backwaters.

With Water Metro ferries yet to begin service, NATPAC, the agency that was expected to do performance evaluation of these ferries and operational requirements if any, has in turn shifted focus to conducting passenger survey in routes that were networked by SWTD ferries and to probe routes in the Kochi backwaters where there was tourism potential, it is learnt. The NATPAC was also tasked with studying fare revision for SWTD services that now operate at rock-bottom tariff.

Sources in KMRL said seven ferries and personnel had been kept ready to operate in the Vypeen and Kakkanad routes, where jetties have been completed. “Being a State government project, it is up to the government to take a call on launching the service in the two routes where extensive trial runs were conducted during the past year,” they said.

The metro agency is hopeful that the shipyard will hand over all the 23 ferries by year-end. It is awaiting the approval of German lending agency KfW to finalise the bid for 55 fifty-passenger ferries of the 78-strong Water Metro fleet, since other tender procedures are over. Their manufacturing could begin soon after, said metro sources.