Ropeways Are Much More Than Tourist Attractions — Infravisioning With Vinayak Chatterjee

Vinayak Chatterjee's Infravisioning video series analyses and explains developments in India’s infrastructure sector to the BQ Prime audience.

Edited excerpts of the video:

In India, ropeways have generally been installed as tourist attractions. But now there is a big push to have ropeways as significant solutions for transportation requirements.

Indians are not unfamiliar with ropeways. Many domestic locations provide their own special appeal. These include the Gulmarg Gondola, the Auli Cable Car in Uttarakhand, the ropeways at Dhuandhar in Madhya Pradesh, Karni Mata in Udaipur, Girnar in Gujarat, Raigad in Maharashtra, Malampuzha in Kerala, and the Darjeeling and Gangtok ropeways and many others.

But it is ever since the Finance Minister’s pointed reference in her last Budget speech, that the spotlight has turned to ropeways, not merely as tourist attractions but as transportation solutions.

This is what she had to say, Parvatmala or the National Ropeways Development Programme is a preferred ecologically sustainable alternative to conventional roads and difficult hilly areas. It will be taken up with the PPP or public-private partnership mode and the aim is to improve connectivity and convenience for commuters, besides promoting tourism.

This may also cover congested urban areas, she said, where a conventional mass transit system is not feasible. Contracts for eight ropeway projects, for a length of 60 kilometres, will be awarded in 2022-23—the current fiscal.

It is noteworthy that the government's vision of the ropeways as transportation solutions now covers congested urban areas and river crossings too.

An urban connectivity initiative getting acclaim internationally is Columbia's largest public works project—the new mass transit cable car service in the capital city of Bogota. Inaugurated on Dec. 27, 2018, it connects high points of two of the city's low income neighbourhoods. It is able to transport 3,600 passengers per hour and benefits 7,00,000 residents, who are now able to make a trip in 10 minutes that earlier took 60 to 90 minutes.

On river crossings, India has its iconic project across the Brahmaputra river. In the summer of 2020, a 1.8 km ropeway was commissioned, making it the longest river ropeway in the country.

Thousands of people commute now every day between Guwahati and north Guwahati. The ropeway enables travel in 10 minutes, a journey that otherwise used to take 45 minutes by ferry or over an hour by road. As a bonus, it also offers breathtaking views of the Brahmaputra and its surroundings.

Passenger ropeways are classified according to their operational characteristics. The more common forms are aerial tramways, gondolas and chairlifts.

As a transportation alternative, they present clear advantages, with reference to specific terrain that result in lower land acquisition costs and are environmentally friendly and, contrary to popular belief, can handle volumes.

A robust ropeway can carry up to 10,000 passengers an hour, the equivalent of 200 bus loads. Ropeways can handle steep gradients, where a road or rail road need switchbacks or tunnels—a ropeway can negotiate the same in a straight line.

In urban settings, the fact that only narrow-based vertical supports are needed at intervals leaves the rest of the ground free and makes it possible for the ropeways to be constructed in built-up areas and in places where there is intense competition for land use.

The Ministry of Road Transport and Highways has been made responsible for the development of ropeways and alternative mobility solutions. It now has the responsibility for crafting a regulatory regime for the sector, including issues related to choice of technology, safety and operational guidelines.

The National Highways Logistics Management Ltd. has been assigned to undertake all the work related to the development of ropeways.

It is understood from Ministry sources that following the FM’s Budget announcement, the ropeways market has been buzzing. Proposals have been pouring in from different parts of the country, including from the state governments of Himachal Pradesh, Manipur, Arunachal Pradesh, Sikkim, Maharashtra and Jammu and Kashmir.

Seven projects in Uttarakhand have been identified and an MOU has been signed with the Uttarakhand Tourism Development Board.

In May 2022, the board invited bids for the first ropeway project for city commuters in India. It is a 3.8 km ropeway link connecting Varanasi Cantonment Railway Station and Godowlia Chowk to be developed with an investment of Rs 461 crore under the Hybrid Annuity Model.

Safety, of course, is paramount. The Indian Home Ministry issued an advisory to all states in April in the wake of a ropeway accident that happened in Deoghar district of Jharkhand.

The ministry has stressed the need to have detailed standard operating procedures and a contingency plan for ropeway operations to prevent the occurrence of such incidents in the future.

Internationally, the ropeways industry is dominated by EU companies, which account for 90% of industry worldwide. The EU has specific safety legislation in place.

It is expected that in the emphasis of atmanirbharta, India’s existing ropeway manufacturers and developers—who have been relatively unrecognised—will now get an opportunity to scale up and emerge as key players in a global context.

A key development has been the MOU signed with WAPCOS, the Government of India company, and Doppelmayr for providing end-to-end solutions for passenger ropeway projects. WAPCOS is a leading engineering consultancy of the Government of India, and Doppelmayr of Austria is the world's largest manufacturer with more than 15,000 ropeway installations across the world.

Many more such collaborations are expected now. Union Transport Minister Nitin Gadkari is well-known for his innovative ideas, and he has been advocating the development of ropeways and alternate mobility for quite some time.

With his ministry now duly empowered and under this leadership to craft the new ropeway transportation market, India should be in for some exciting times with ropeways proliferating across the country.