By A Special Correspondent

CONCERNS OVER THE safety and technical feasibility of the Konkan Railway Corporation’s (KRC) skybus continue to abound after Saturday’s mishap that left one person dead and four injured. While T Babu was declared dead shortly after the collision, it is learnt that an employee of the South Central railway, Ramachandran Murthy, is still in serious condition. The accident occurred during the experimental system’s trial run when the skybus collided into concrete columns after the emergency brake was pulled.

The Goa Police have registered cases against KRC’s chief signal officer Narendra Singh Deo and Laxmi Narsimha for negligence. Narsimha works for the Hyderabad-based company Kernex Software that has been operating the skybus’ computerised system.

KRC Managing Director B Rajaram ordered an inquiry into the accident and a four-member committee headed by Prof Lakkad of IIT, Mumbai were in the State on a two-day visit this week to determine the cause of the mishap. The findings of the inquiry are yet to be made public.

FATAL ERROR: The test run of the KRC's Skybus which claimed one life.

Maintaining that the skybus was safe, Rajaram said, “It will have to be seen if the accident was caused by a failure in the design or due to negligence.” He further added that the technical feasibility of the project was already established and that accidents were a part of the ‘job hazard’ and would prove to be a learning experience for a technology under trial.

But the mishap might dent the KRC’s plans to sell the technology to other states across the nation. Just three days after the first public run of the project on September 15 in Margao, the KRC invited Expressions of Interest (EoIs) from companies to implement the rail system on various routes in different cities on a ‘technology license basis’. The EOIs stated that the system was constructed using latest pre-fabricated construction technologies to save time and money for an easy execution of the project in busy urban areas without disturbing the existing traffic pattern. It also quoted the TUV Rheinland Group’s initial assessment report on level of maturity for safe application of the system saying that it had found the system technically feasible as a mass transportation system. The KRC even went ahead and invited EoIs from parties who wanted to set up restaurants in the vicinity of the skybus in Goa.

However, even before the mishap, the skybus system was facing stiff competition from the metro rail system promoted by the founding Chairman of the KRC and Delhi Metro Rail Corporation’s CMD E Sreedharan, who had called the project “unviable” and “misleading” last year. He had also said that the full implementation of the project would take another ten years adding Rs 60-65 crores per km to the costs. Rajaram had however rubbished Sreedharan’s statements at the time and KRC had released a statement saying that a panel of experts including Padma Bhushan Dr. Anil Kakodar, who is currently the Chairman of Atomic Energy Commission, had said that safety and reliability were enhanced in the skybus systems. The statement promised that KRC would deliver the skybus within two years and within Rs. 50 crores per km. The KRC PRO’s statement even took a dig at the DMRC by saying that the cost of the skybus was half to one-fourth of Metro Rail and LRT posing a threat to those systems.

But after Saturday’s mishap, the KRC will now find it extremely difficult to regain public confidence in its initiative. Whether due to negligence or failure in design, the skybus proved to be unsafe for T Babu and four of his colleagues.

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