Vessel boost key to Kochi Water Metro expansion

The Kochi Water Metro has served more than four million passengers as of April 2025, reaching this milestone within its first two years of operation

- PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

Kochi’s Water Metro, billed as the country’s first public boat service powered by electricity, is drawing interest from several states eager to replicate the model ~ but its chief says scaling up vessel production is the biggest hurdle.

Loknath Behera, the managing director of the Water Metro, said that several states were keen to replicate the network, which has been hailed as a model for sustainable urban transport.

“Kochi model can be replicated wherever there are navigable water bodies. The term ‘water bodies’ covers a wide range -- in some places you have rivers, like in Varanasi, Patna and Kolkata; in Odisha there is the Chilika lake; and in Mumbai it is a hybrid, with both the sea and creek waters. So, we can’t actually 100 per cent replicate this (KWM) and there will be variations in the vessels,” Behera, a 1985-batch Indian Police Service (IPS) officer, who retired as the Kerala Police chief in 2021, said.