TENSING RODRIGUESAt the end of the article Mopa v/s Dabolim by Rahul Basu that appeared in the Herald Review ( February 10) the author concluded that the idea of an airport at Mopa is stupid. He wrote: Our politicians are not stupid, why are they still pushing for Mopa? Basus study elevates the de-bate on Mopa above the political tug-of-war that it has been up to now. But his conclusion is based on some highly restrictive premises. We need to un-derstand that the Mopa v/s Dabolim debate originated in the vested inter-ests of hoteliers located in the North and South of Goa; and it has been fu-elled by these lobbies all along. First, let me accept that Mopa is not perhaps the best location for a new airport. But I suppose now we are beyond the stage of looking out for an optimum location for it; so accept-ing it as a fait accompli, I am restrict-ing myself to just Mopa and Dabolim. Further, I fully agree with Basu that two airports in such close vicinity is a stupid idea. Now let me come to the two restrictive premises that make an airport at Mopa look stupid: one - that the international airport in Goa is for Goa alone; two - that an airport is merely a place where planes land.An international airport in Goa cannot be for Goa alone; it cannot be sustained by the traffic generated by a small place like Goa. Goa may be a State, but it is smaller in area and pop-ulation than many districts in India. We may be under an illusion that Goas tourist traffic will sustain an interna-tional airport. We need to rethink that assumption.Therefore we have to necessarily look at a larger catchment area. Goas geographical positioning, I feel, re-stricts the catchment area of the air-port to the coastal belt - south of the hinterland of Mumbai and north of the hinterland of Mangalore. We may have to replace the existing Mumbai airport in the north by the airport in or around Navi Mumbai, while doing this calculation. That gives us about 250 km to the north and 200 km to the south, which encompasses the dis-tricts of Ratnagiri (South) and Sind-

hudurga in Maharashtra and Uttar Kanara in Karnataka. Why not the area beyond the Ghats, like the districts of Kolhapur and Sangli in Maharashtra and Belgaum, Dharwad and Haveri in Karnataka? Passengers or freight from beyond Ghats cannot be easily captured by an airport in Goa because of tenuous links across the Ghats. The only ro-bust road link between the coast and

the up-Ghat region along the entire stretch between Mumbai and Er-nakulam is NH 48 (old NH 4) connect-ing Mumbai to Pune; nowhere below that there exists such a link. There are numerous roads crossing the Ghats to the south of Mumbai: Ratnagiri-Kol-hapur, Panaji-Belgaum, Kumta- Sirsi, Honnavar--Shimoga, Managalore-Madikeri, etc.; but none of these are capable of providing robust and rapid links. As for the rail links, Madgaon-Londa is the only broad gauge line crossing the Ghats between Mumbai and Mangalore; seven trains run on the route of which only two are daily. The broad gauge line connecting Man-galore to Hassan is an even weaker link, with only two daily trains run-ning on it. Both these are single lines and not electrified; the Railway Vision 2020 document too does not propose any improvement in the situation. The next link below that - the Shorannur- Erode line - is however a robust link. The Ghats, therefore, have remained insurmountable at least as far as the hinterland of Goa is concerned. Thus, it makes sense to restrict the catch-

ment area of an airport in Goa to the coastal belt - south of the hinterland of Mumbai and north of the hinterland of Mangalore. The Belgaum and Hubli airports, therefore, move out of reck-oning; they cannot be competitors to an airport in Goa. That leaves us with two contenders - Sindhudurga and Karwar. Of these Karwar should be dropped out. It is going to be a Naval Airport, just like Dabolim; and, therefore, like Dabo-lim, can never aspire to be a real international airport. A naval airport is basically a defence es-tablishment, with all its necessary constraints. A civilian airport needs to be free of all constraints, save those related to en-vironment; only then can it aspire to attain global standards. Sindhudurga airport is the only other real contender; and I have no argument to wish it away; at least at this point.Let me now turn to the demolition of the second restrictive premise: that an airport is merely a place where planes land. An airport need not be merely a place where planes land. All interna-tional airports that have made big today are more than mere airports - they are integrated trans-port hubs which people prefer to use. That requires out of the box think-ing; and that is what I want to show is necessary in Goas case. I am basing my suggestions particularly on my experience of the new Kuala Lumpur Airport.The idea of an integrated transport hub suggests itself once we look at

the map of the area around Mopa. NH 66 (old NH 17) runs at 1.66 km from the airport location; and the Konkan Railway line runs at 3.06 km. When the airport comes up it is likely to be skirted by the NH (though at different elevations) and will have the KR line within less than 2km from its periph-ery. Does that suggest to you a mul-timodal transport hub? I know there are some ground level difficulties there; mainly because of the topog-raphy and the distance (about 2 km) between the KR line and the NH. Move your sight a little lower on the map and you have the two lines - the NH and the KR - converging at the Pernem Railway Station - just about 6 km from the airport; considering the spread of the airport, the distance may be ac-tually about 4 km. Here is where the out of the box thinking comes in. And this is what the new KL International Airport (KLIA) has demonstrated: the airport where the planes land and take off can be far from the Passenger Terminal. At KLIA, which is 60 km away from KL city, the major flights land and take off from what is known

as the Satellite Terminal A, while the passengers check in and check out at Main Terminal or Terminal 1. It is here that the passengers complete their immigration and other tasks like buy-ing local currency or SIM card or duty-free shopping. A dedicated passenger train called the Aerotrain takes the passengers from the Satellite Termi-nal to the Main Terminal. The 3-car 250-person capacity driverless trains complete the 2 km journey in less than two minutes. If the Mopa Air-port is so designed that the Satellite Terminal is located at Mopa plateau and the Main Terminal is located on the plain at the convergence of NH and the KR lines, a similar train should be able to cover the 4 km distance in less than 5 minutes. A smaller capac-ity train with a lower frequency may be what we will need to start with. An integrated multimodal transport hub could be developed at the Pernem Railway Station where passengers can switch from plane to train or bus and vice versa, from train to bus and vice versa, all under one roof in abso-lute comfort. The complex would also

provide for booking of tickets, sani-tary utilities, relaxation while wait-ing, food and refreshments, booking of hotels and shopping. It is needless to say that the hub is not just a utility; it is a business proposition that will provide employment and income to locals and revenue to the Goa govern-ment. That is what it has to be even-tually: a hub for growth of the entire region. Integrated hubs like this can provide tremendous boost to local produce as they attract large con-gregations of customers; it becomes a virtuous cycle: activity attracts crowds, and crowds attract activity, and the growth effect trickles down over a wide region. And the right type of growth: growth without the ill ef-fects of crass urbanisation, rapacious industrialisation and unjust concen-tration of wealth.Even looking from the narrow point of view of the viability of the airport, no major airport can be viable if it can-not derive more than half of its income from non-aeronautical activities; I suppose the ratio for a viable business model is something like 20:80 be-tween aeronautical and non-aeronau-tical activities. Or else the non-travel-ling public has to bear the tax burden; or the airport has to simply price itself out of the competition. Crucial to the viability of the integrated transport hub is the connectivity. And that is the location advantage of Mopa: the KR Station, the NH 66 and the airport will be in close proximity, providing connectivity within the region as well as with the rest of the world. But this advantage will work for the viability of the hub and the airport if and only if the KR line and the NH are used op-timally. Passengers landing at Mopa need to be shuttled to their destina-tions in comfort and in the shortest possible time. One excellent option is to use the major KR stations as the hubs for disembarkation of air trav-ellers and run fast trains connecting these stations. This is again a superb idea that has been tried out by KLIA. A high speed non-stop train KLIA Ex-press connects the airport to another marvelous transport hub KL Sentral in the heart of Kuala Lumpur - in just 28 minutes; another train KLIA Tran-sit makes two stops in between; what is the most important, the trains start from within the Main Terminal of the airport. Other railway lines - metro, suburban, intercity and transnational (going to Bangkok and Singapore) - ei-ther originate at or pass through KL Sentral; as a result the air passengers have unsurpassed connectivity with comfort, speed and economy. Similar trains could start from the Pernem Integrated Transport Hub or the trains passing through Pernem KR Station could be utilised for this purpose, depending on the traffic volumes and track availability. They would have to then connect to the

major stations on the KR route be-tween Ratnagiri and Bhatkal; some trains could connect to only few sta-tions, others could connect to more. If we are to get back to the narrow context of tourist flow to Goa, as an illustration, Thivim would cater to the Calangute-Baga belt, Madgaon would cater to the Mobor-Bogmalo belt, and so on. This would also pro-vide impetus to the up gradation of KR infrastructure, and make KR the dream lifeline of Konkan, that it was supposed to be. Integration is very critical for the success of this model. Or else, we will have a situation similar to that in Chennai. Chennai International Air-port (CIA) is one of the few in India probably which can be accessed by a train. The other one is Delhi Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGI); I am told the Metro connection from New Delhi to IGI is of global stan-dards. CIA has the rail connectivity, but the switch is not at all smooth. Chennai city is served by the Metro; the metropolitan area is served by lo-cal trains. So if you are somewhere in the city - say Triplicane, Royapettah or Mylapore - and you have to fly, you need to take a Metro train to Chennai Fort and then catch a local train back to Tirusulam - the station close to the airport. The subway at Tirusulam sta-tion opens out into the airport area; but the subway stinks and is usually inundated; and after that you need to walk about 400 metres through dusty rubble to enter the Terminal. Hopefully, once the Metro line gets extended to the airport, the switch should be smoother. Integrating the airport into the local transport net-work goes a long way in making an airport passenger friendly. The beauty of Pernem Integrated Transport Hub is that it offers a par-allel mode for dispersion: the NH 66. Fast and comfortable coaches could carry the air passengers to their des-tinations in the hinterland. The two modes, therefore, would complement each other, offering flexibility and wider reach; NH 66 would provide ac-cess to those areas lying away from the KR line. The question is, why not follow the same model at Dabolim? Dabolim has the added advantage of access to the South Western (SW) rail line. Yes, Dabolim has access to SW line; but, as said before, it is a weak link. Well that could be strengthened. So I will not discard that point altogether. But Dabolim is too far from the KR line, which is more vital to service the hin-terland of the airport. (Actually that is not really true: the KR line passes very close to the airport, but some half a kilometer below!) Dabolim is also far from the NH 66; that however is not a big problem, as NH 66A (the so called Four Lane Highway), which passes by the airport, can be a strong link to NH 66. But most important handicap is the unavailability of space to develop an Integrated Multimodal Transport Hub in the neighbourhood of Dabo-lim. Some 25 years back it would have been possible; that is before Verna was developed as an industrial hub. Verna Plateau would have been an excellent site for an Integrated Multi-modal Transport Hub.To conclude, the choice today is not between Mopa and Dabolim. The only real challenge that I perceive for Mopa is Sindhudurga. Because, all that I have proposed for Mopa will also work for Sindhudurga. If Sindhudurga materialises in a big way, Mopa will have to bow out; and even Dabolim. If we do not want that to happen, we will have to act fast and act decisively on a massive scale to emerge the win-ner between the two.

G O A S U N D A Y , m a r c h 1 0 , 2 0 1 3g g

Dabolim, can never aspire to be a real international airport. A naval airport is basically a defence establishment

Integrating Mopa airport into the local transport network will go a long way in making the airport passenger friendly 7

AN AIRPORT NEED NOT BE MERELY A PLACE WHERE PLANES LAND. ALL INTERNATIONAL AIRPORTS THAT HAVE MADE BIG TODAY ARE MORE THAN MERE AIRPORTS - THEY ARE INTEGRATED TRANSPORT HUBS WHICH PEOPLE PREFER TO USE. THAT REQUIRES OUT OF THE BOX THINKING. I AM BASING MY SUGGESTIONS PARTICULARLY ON MY EXPERIENCE OF THE NEW KUALA LUMPUR AIRPORT.

AN INTEGRATED MULTIMODAL TRANSPORT HUB COULD BE DEVELOPED AT THE PERNEM RAILWAY STATION WHERE PASSENGERS CAN SWITCH FROM PLANE TO TRAIN OR BUS AND VICE VERSA, FROM TRAIN TO BUS AND VICE VERSA, ALL UNDER ONE ROOF IN ABSOLUTE COMFORT. THE COMPLEX WOULD ALSO PROVIDE FOR BOOKING OF TICKETS, SANITARY UTILITIES, RELAXATION WHILE WAITING, FOOD AND REFRESHMENTS, BOOKING OF HOTELS AND SHOPPING.

OPEN SPACE

Mopa versus Dabolim: A rejoinderThe debate over whether Goa should have a single new greenfield airport at Mopa, or two airports, retaining the current one in Dabolim as well, has been tossed around for years. After a consultant argued cogently that Goa could well managequite efficientlywith Dabolim alone, another contributor takes a counter view in the ongoing debate