KOCHI'S BOATS CHART A NATIONAL COURSE

India wants to modernize its ancient waterways for mass transit. Can it be a game changer?

- Radhika P. Nair

Neema Veliyath lives in her nearly 100-year-old heritage home, also a homestay, on Vypin Island, off mainland Ernakulam. As a longtime resident, she knows arriving by water is the best introduction to Vypin and to her homestay, called The Bungalow.

Until 2023, visitors had only two options. They could either take a crowded, non-air-conditioned government ferry ill-suited for travellers, or make a slow, mundane road journey across the lone bridge to the mainland.

And then, a water metro launched.

"Finally, there was an easier and more scenic way for my guests to reach Vypin. It is safer and environmentally friendly, too," said Veliyath, whose home is barely 300 metres from the station. "My guests love it, and so do I."

Once, water lay at the centre of everyday life in Kerala. From before the arrival of the Portuguese in Kochi, in 1500, up until the early 1900s, when the first road bridge connecting the mainland with Willingdon Island was built, boats were the only way to move between the major islands in the Ernakulam region.

Over the decades, as the road network expanded, and policy tilted toward road-building, Kochi's relationship with its waterways faded and boats slipped to the margins of daily life. But, as Veliyath's experience suggests, water is reemerging as an urban mobility solution.

If things proceed according to plan and if the Inland Waterways Authority of India (IWAI) has its way, 17 locations across 12 states in India could see water metros, like the one in Kochi, come up in a few years.

IWAI, inspired by Kochi's success, has roped in Kochi Metro Rail Ltd (KMRL), which built and operationalised the Kochi Water Metro, to conduct feasibility studies across the country, from Srinagar in the North to Kollam in the South, and Goa and Mumbai in the West to Guwahati in the East. In places like Goa and Mumbai, the process is already moving to the planning stage.