12. Business Luxury - The Gujju way

Let's say, I am a Gujju businessman owning a S-class Mercedes and having an office anywhere along the Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train route, while my family stays in Ahmedabad. I can think of a 1000 such families in my knowledge leave alone making an actual count.

Now would I pay Rs. 20,000 for a one-way luxury class ticket to Mumbai from Ahmedabad ( I will leave out the cost dynamics of the intermediate travel for the interested accountant) by the bullet train on a daily basis?

Normally, no!! While my Merc proclaims my status, I am particular about the daily cost of the travel so I would keep such bullet train travel for visitors i want to impress or special weekends or to get a business visitor to see my farm house 45 kms away from the city center in Ahmedabad!

But what if the bullet train authorities said that i could drive in my mercedes into the bullet train and drive off in Mumbai , drive around, and then drive back into the bullet train and drive back home at the end of the day - would this entice me? Would such an offer be affordable to the Railways?

How the cars may go into the train!

Lets take a peek into the cost dynamics from either side -

Railway perspective -

The railways as per the Wikipedia plans a 10 to 16 coach train capable of carrying 1300 to 1600 passengers. For ease of calculation i presume a 16 coach , 1600 passenger capacity format  which gives me 100 passengers per coach.

A normal coach would earn me a revenue of Rs. 150000 per coach , @ Rs. 1500 per 100 passengers.
So, if i get this amount i am revenue neutral.

Not knowing the dimensions of the coach, I am going by mere geometry, so, I took Tata Divo Luxury Bus that takes 45 passengers and its length is about 12 meters, so I presume that at 24 meters the length of the coach would accomodate 100 passengers.

Next, I browsed for overall lengths of luxury cars , which are less than 6 meters so I presumed that i could fit 4 cars on the floor and 4 cars on an upper berth , no car being greater than 1.5 meters in height - total 8 cars. Similarly a payload of 20 tonnes should match weights of a filled coach on a design basis for the bullet train to look on this payload as a normal passenger coach in all aspects.

So, the cost for railways is Rs. 150000 divided by 8 cars  - Rs. 18750 /- per car !! Rs. 1250 for attendants and good snacks or cold drinks from Taj Sats! - Total Rs. 20,000

Infra for driving cars into the train

For me (remember I am a Gujju businessman now  ) -
I will put the cost of travel in Mumbai all through the day including travel to and from the airport -
Rs.200 per day parking charges at the station counting both ends together.
Rs. 4500 minimum (Rs. 1500 per person for three persons I will take in my mercedes)
Rs. 6000 Economy Class airfare to Mumbai per person - Rs. 18000/-

My God, its a deal (and the driver gets to travel for free as I expect in all my transactions !!)

8. Windows - What should they be made of ?

In August 2015, I had written an email to friends and my erstwhile organisation about some exciting developments in the field of solar cell materials.

I think the opportunity to use such a material on the window of the bullet train is too good a opportunity to miss given that this area is going to be exposed to sun quite a lot!

Please read the note written then and imagine for yourself how this would play when such material is used in the windows.

Energy from renewables

Also see a comparison of costs of fossils fuel consumption in the referred spreadsheet which is also linked here for your review!

Sample calculations on renewables

6. Toilets, bullet train and Swachch Bharat

How many toilets would be required in a train that completes its end to end 508 km journey in two hours?

The point is a local train in Mumbai that travels from CSTM (earlier called VT) to Kasara or Karjat takes about 2 hours today and there is no provision for a toilet in it!!

Obviously, the daily commuters of this type of local train are not senior citizens and children that are above the nappy age but not yet able to control themselves, are some points that need to be factored.

Therefore, airplane toilets are a natural choice and the number should be one per two or may three compartments with free rights of admission to Physically handicapped, children below 10 and senior citizens.

The others can pay a nominal Rs. 50 / - to use the toilet more as a deterrent to prevent the abundant misuse that such provision is likely to attract in our country.

When some of us travel abroad, we do pay 1 Euro to use the public toilet, why should the bullet train toilet charge any less?

The collection proceeds could of course go to the continuance of Swachch Bharat Abhiyan to provide clean toilets for all! 

5. Bullet Train Financials

In October 2015, there was a raging debate among very well qualified friends of mine as to the financial viability of the bullet train proposal in India.

The major worries were the cost of the journey, the repayment capability, and other metrics apart from the fact that each of us were actually lobbying inadvertently to push his view on the need for this project, while, masking it through the gambit of viability.

We left the spreadsheet at a revenue neutral price of  Rs.500 per one-way journey between Ahmedabad and Mumbai, provided that there was time share on the tracks to push goods , say during the night periods. This was a mixed model for passenger cum goods traffic on the same infrastructure!

The link to the spreadsheet and the concluding argument (in  a mail form) on financials giving the assumptions as we left it  is below -

Concluding argument listing assumptions, mitigation etc.

Sample Bullet Train Financial spreadsheet (vintage Aug-Oct 2015)
Sample sheet updated 3 dec 2019 after errors discovered
{The key changes as on 3 dec 2019 were -
1. FE rate updated to Rs.71.6 per dollar
2. Japanese Loan Amount updated to Rs.79000 crores.
3. Freight rate reduced to Rs. 500/ tonne after looking up Indian Railways Freight calculator! see snapshot in link.
The fallout of this was that a goods traffic of 227 Million Metric Tonnes was required per annum between Ahmedabad and Mumbai for a net positive cash flow of Rs. 1500 crores per annum given all other liabilities which are presumed on the higher side to offset short and long term risk. 227 Million Metric Tonnes might be reasonable assumption on this leg as 1016 MMT was carried throughout India in 2016-17 reported by Indian Railways. Those interested may refer to the pages 83 onwards of the Joint feasibility final report by JICA and IR and page 10 of the report published by IR for 2016-17)
4. Repayment of Japanese Loan (Principal and Interest) set to 50 years which is as per original understanding
5. Depreciation has to be charged over 20 years, which for such a large project is a given! 8 years in the original sheet was too aggressive and this perhaps masked the Rs.15 per kg of freight cost!!}

Updated May 2016 - Passenger ticket Rs. 1500/- , Freight Rs.7.50 / Kg , Pass./Freight Revenue Ratio 1:1

Please feel free to download, play around, question assumptions, build alternates, as long as we aim to find a way to get the price of travel lower than the one declared below!

The price as announced recently in the newspaper for only passenger traffic considering about 100 journeys both ways transporting about 100000 passengers per day  is Rs. 1500 ! (as on 3 Dec 2019 various newspaper reports are talking of prices between Rs. 2500 and Rs. 4000 to match air fares and it would be a shame on our capabilities as a nation if this were to come to pass)

I have argued that marginal addition in cost should be incurred to make it feasible to transport goods in a timeshare mode using majority of the same infrastructure which can form a part of the Delhi- Mumbai dedicated freight corridor! The freight revenue will easily offset the additional cost and may even be a revenue spinner as the spreadsheet shows.

This idea has been opposed on technical grounds , so many of my technical ideas will still presume this basis as i would want the lowest cost travel (commensurate with a regime of non-subsidy outside the given infrastructure paradigm)  for this fantastic experience that our countrymen will have! 

Don't they deserve to have one?

Finally, as one friend said, once a vision is bought into, it is only a question of how to make it possible!