The Status of the Nepal Ropeway
HISTORY OF A PIONEERING EFFORT
Ropeways have existed in Nepal for eight decades. The first was the Swayambhunath Ropeway, a British-model mono-cable system built in Kathmandu. Rana Prime Minister Chandra Shamsher commissioned it in 1924 to carry stones four kilometres from a quarry in Halchok to Lainchaur in order to construct Rana palaces as well as the roads that linked them. Though it operated till 1964, specific details about its performance are not known. After roads were extended to the corners of the valley, access to other quarries and the door-to-door delivery of stones by trucks forced its closure. All sixteen of its operators were transferred to the newly established NR, which was operated by HMG/N’s Ropeway Office.
Nepal’s second ropeway, the 22-kilometre-long Tri Chandra Nepal Tara Ropeway, came into operation in 1927. This mono-cable system crossed the Mahabharat Range southwest of Kathmandu and linked the village of Matatirtha with Dhorshing, a village near the roadhead town of Bhimphedi about 70 kilometres from Raxaul. This mono-cable system, which was first tested by the British during the third Afghan War, was brought to Nepal by Keymer Sons and Company, London. A residential engineer and a few advisory staff members of the Ropeway Office operated both the Swayambhunath and the Dhorshing-Matatirtha ropeways under the supervision of Kilburn, the chief engineer of the Bijuli Adda (Electricity Office).
In addition to the ropeway, other modes of transport were also used available between Kathmandu and Raxaul. The Nepal Government Railway (NGR) carried goods from Raxaul to Amlekhgunj, from where lorries carried the freight to Dhorshing. Then the ropeway was used for haulage to Matatirtha from which point trollies carried the goods to the customs office in Teku.
The original capacity of the ropeway was eight tonnes per hour, a rate capable of meeting the bulk transport needs of Kathmandu at that time. After 20 years of operation, constant wear and tear and the repeated derailment of its carriers had reduced its capacity to 5.6 tonnes per hour. In 1947, towers were erected to extend the ropeway from Matatirtha to Teku, a distance of 6.5 kilometres, but this section was not brought into operation because its carriers and spare parts were cannibalised to keep the Dhorshing-Matatirtha system operational.
In the early 1960’s, worn-out ropes, the lack of spare parts, and grip failure increased the frequency with which carriers derailed from the supporting sheaves. The mounting loss of goods reduced the ropeway’s reliability. Ultimately it could no longer sustain itself, and the government finally shut down the Dhorshing-Matatirtha in 1964. Its property and staff were transferred to the NR when the Hetauda-Kathmandu Ropeway was completed.
The US government helped extend the Dhorshing-Matatirtha ropeway to transport goods from Hetauda to Kathmandu because the Tribhuban Highway, which connects Kathmandu and Hetauda frequently closed. Opened to traffic in 1956, the Highway passes over steep terrain and has numerous hairpin bends. Winter snow on the mountaintops and heavy rains during the monsoon result in frequent landslides which block the road and every year bring frequent halts to the movement of vehicles. An agreement was signed between USAID/Nepal and HMG/N to construct a 42kilometre-long ropeway with a hauling capacity of 22 tonnes per hour. Thirty years later, a USAID publication reflects on this venture as follows*:
An innovative project suited to Nepal’s mountainous terrain was the Hetauda-Kathmandu ropeway, started in 1959. The 45 kilometres aerial cableway was built to carry freight from the developing industrial town of Hetauda, at the edge of the Tarai, to Kathmandu. By directly traversing two high ridges, it cut off two-thirds of the distance required to haul freight by road.
The ropeway was intended to provide a dependable, economic, all-weather means of supplying essential items (primarily food) to the Kathmandu Valley. It would prove particularly advantageous in the monsoon, when landslides frequently blocked road access to Kathmandu. By utilising local electricity rather than imported diesel fuel, the ropeway was designed to save precious foreign
* Skerry, C. A., Moran, K., and Calavan, K. M., 1991: Four Decades of Development: The History of
U.S. Assistance to Nepal (1951-1991), United States Agency for International Development (USAID), Kathmandu. (The actual length of this ropeway is 42 kilometre—Editors)
exchange and reduce the cost of hauling goods by truck over the steep, winding
Tribhuvan Highway.
This project replaced and extended the 22 kilometres mono-cable ropeway, which had been operating from the Tarai town of Dhursing into the Kathmandu Valley since 1927. The new system’s capacity was 25 tonnes per hour, three times that of the earlier one. USOM contributed US$ 4 million and hired Riblet Tramways of Spokane, Washington, to install the ropeway. At the time, the project was the most technically advanced enterprise ever attempted in Nepal and it demanded incredible effort. It was supported by 280 steel towers, which were fabricated in the U.S, shipped to India, carried in pieces to sites and assembled on the spot. Tremendous lengths of steel cable were hauled into position by long lines of porters manoeuvring down narrow, steep, mountain trails.
Construction proceeded without major difficulties until a test run was made in 1962. When the cableway was operating, all the lights in Kathmandu dimmed. The capital’s power supply was insufficient for the scheme. The power shortage and a number of technical and administrative difficulties slowed the completion of the project.
The ropeway was completed in April 1964 and was turned over to HMG/ N for operation by the Nepal Transport Corporation. Actual use (17,000-37,000 tonnes annually between 1966 and 1970) was disappointing in comparison with the ropeway’s capacity of 50,000 tonnes per year. Ropeway traffic constituted about 15 per cent of northbound freight along the Kathmandu-Raxaul corridor; the remainder was hauled in by truck. While the northbound lines were used to import foodstuffs and construction materials into Kathmandu Valley, the southbound route remained virtually unused because of the small volume of surplus produced in Kathmandu Valley. The ropeway received its greatest use as an alternative to the Tribhuvan Highway before the Bharatpur-Kathmandu* road was completed in 1981. Today it remains operational but is underutilised, despite its potential energy-saving benefits.
The ropeway began operating under the direction of a ropeway committee, but because HMG/N did not have a concrete policy its operation was unstable for about a year. In 1964, NTC was formed and the ropeway committee was dissolved. The Hetauda-Kathmandu Ropeway, along with the assets of the first two systems, was handed over to NTC and re-named the NR. HMG/N handed over its responsibilities to NTC, entrusting it to serve as the main operator. NTC’s responsibility was limited to operations; it did not aim to promote or develop the NR as a corporate firm. The limitations of NTC’s role, unfortunately, stymied the institutional scope for the growth of ropeways in Nepal as a complementary mode of transportation.
From its high point in the early 1970s, the NR began a downward spiral which lasted for twenty years. The list of ailments is long but worth recording. Poor planning and marketing resulted in the severe under-utilisation of its capacity during much of the late 1970’s and over the next two decades. Poor personnel management, the lack of job descriptions and excessive political interference resulted in overstaffing but at the same time a dearth of the technical experts needed to carry out urgent maintenance needs. Since there was no personnel management policy or personnel development programme, the level of morale among employees plummeted. In a vicious cycle with a negative feedback loop, dissatisfaction among staff contributed to poor standards of planning, budgeting, monitoring and maintenance. With the deterioration of its information and control systems, the ropeway became even more inefficient. The situation could not continue without the NR’s becoming a financial burden to NTC, so the ropeway was closed in 2001.
TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION
The Hetauda-Kathmandu is a continuous bi-cable ropeway system that uses two ropes, a stationary track cable and a hauling rope. Carriers are suspended from the stationary track cable and attached to the moving traction rope using wedge-rope grips, which use springs to grip the traction rope and secure the carriers. The carriers used are single hanger, self-levelling platform carriers.
The line structures and anchors include towers, breakovers, tension stations, anchor towers, traction rope towers, track cable anchor equipment, and track cable tension equipment. They are made of steel and designed and located to support and control the track cable and traction rope between terminals.
In each tower, the track cable is supported on a grooved saddle which is free to rotate so that it can automatically compensate for the changing angle of the track cable caused as ropeway carriers approach and depart. A 10-inch-diameter roller on each side of the tower supports the traction rope. Carrier guides are provided to prevent the carriers from striking the structures should they swing. Breakovers are also towers, but they have the larger foundations and heavier structures needed to support the cable over long distances without using any intermediate support. Tension stations are provided at appropriate points along the line to break up its length and to maintain the tension of the track cable.
An anchor tower is a small tower provided next to a tension station. It is equipped with a saddle to deflect the track cable towards the ground, where it is connected to either a track cable anchor or tension equipment. One end of the track cable is anchored using anchor equipment and the other end is provided with track cable tension equipment to maintain the track cable tension. Tension stations and anchor towers do not support the traction (hauling) rope, so traction towers are strategically placed to prevent the traction rope from touching the ground.
There are eight terminals (Figure 5.1), which are the main control points that regulate carrier movement over any or all sections of the repose. The terminals, which are constructed of steel parts, are located at each end of all seven sections of the repose. The track cables are anchored at each terminal, as well as at intermediate points between the terminals; the traction rope, on the other hand, is a continuous loop which runs between the terminals. Incoming carriers are pushed manually to the traction rope loop of the next section. In addition, a sidetrack (fixed rail) is provided in each terminal for removing the carriers from the line when necessary. The ropeway was designed and constructed with local considerations in mind. For example, in order to provide much-needed jobs, the manual pushing off of carriers was chosen over the sophisticated mechanised system usually found in ropeways.
OPERATION AND MANAGEMENT
Over the years, the NR experienced several problems. The lack of training and skill enhancement programmes for employees was one. In the initial years of operation, a team of qualified staff managed the NR. Subsequently, very little emphasis was placed on providing training to operators and maintenance staff. Deprived of formal opportunities, they were forced to resort to self-training by trial and error and learning by simple observation without theoretical backing. The gap was especially unfortunate for specialists such as rope splicers. The NR’s senior staff could have conducted ad hoc training sessions of one or two days using an operation manual, but lack of interest at the higher levels of management prevented even this minor opportunity from materialising. The supplementary training of staff would have improved operation hours, employee efficiency and work standards as well as reduced the need for supervision. Had the NR established its own training wing, with a month-long programme of classroom and field teaching, both the senior and newly-recruited junior staff would probably have been able to contribute to the smoother operation of the ropeway.
The adverse effect of the lack of training was reflected in the unsatisfactory maintenance of the ropeway. The NR’s maintenance management system, an essential element for keeping any system in operable condition at an acceptable cost, was very poor. To ensure efficiency and reliability, an acceptable standard is required of major facilities such as tower structures, anchor equipment, track cables, traction ropes, carriers, sheaves and other equipment and machines. Maintenance is particularly
rastructure is limited. In an urban area, a staff member could, for example, make a single telephone call to get a disrupted electricity supply reconnected. In contrast, ensuring the smooth operation of a ropeway situated in a remote location may, because there are no communication facilities, require staff to walk for hours to inform authorities about a power cut.
A preliminary cost-benefit analysis indicates that the cost of maintaining a supply line from the nearest transformer to the ropeway terminal in order to secure an uninterrupted supply of power is minimal compared to the losses incurred if a ropeway is out of operation for a long period. The objective of regular maintenance is to minimise the total cost of keeping the facilities at an acceptable standard of efficiency and reliability; in the case of the NR, however, maintenance was not carried out satisfactorily for a long time. The results were low capacity utilisation and unreliability.
Though the actual amount of revenue lost due to the lack of spare parts for the NR is not available, a hypothetical case illustrates the serious impact on income generated which a breakdown has. The rate fixed by the government for goods transported by the NR was Rs 346.80 per tonne, whereas trucks charged Rs 480.00 per tonne. Provided there were sufficient goods to transport, the shut-down of the ropeway for a single day resulted in the revenue loss of Rs 53,407.* If it took 10 days to import a required spare part from India, a revenue loss would amount to Rs 534,070. If the required parts had to be imported from a third country, a minimum of 30 days would pass and the revenue lost would reach Rs 1,602,210. Besides this tangible loss, the NR would suffer from customer dissatisfaction due to delays in the transport of consignments. This in turn would diminish users’ confidence in the ropeway and cause a loss of business for the NR.
The cost of the track cable accounted for more than 40 per cent of the total investment in the ropeway system. The cables were in bad shape as they had outlived their normal lives. According to records, the cable was replaced every 8 to 10 years due to abnormally rapid wearing; nevertheless, they still broke occasionally. The reasons for their rapid aging are discussed below.
The first reason had to do with lubrication. The operation manual recommended that the track cables be lubricated once a month, but this was insufficient, especially during the rainy season, when rain washed lubricant away. The lack of lubrication accelerated corrosion and wear by friction and rusting.
A second explanation for the unusually high wear was that the track cables were periodically rotated through an angle of 900 along their horizontal axes so that
* This amount is obtained assuming that the ropeway operates for seven hours a days hauling 22 tonnes per hour at a rate of Rs 346.80
wear in the ropes would be uniform. Reversal stress caused by this periodic rotation resulted in fatigue failure and shortened the anticipated life of the cables. In fact, the regular cleaning and greasing of the thrust bearings which supported the cable ends and the cable supports on the towers would have been sufficient to ensure that the cable was wearing uniformly. Furthermore, since a spiral cable such as the one used by the NR rotates automatically when carrier sheaves travel on it, wear is minimised only on one side.
Third, due to the expense of purchasing new wheels, mechanics of the NR welded, re-grooved and machined worn-out carrier wheels and re-used them. A welded surface, however, is not homogeneous and does not posses the ideal hardness. These poor-quality wheels were one of the major causes of the abnormally high wearing of the track cables. Instead of fabricating carrier wheels in one piece, they were assembled with a hub and lined with two flanges or liners which could be replaced if they got worn out. A carrier with rubber-lined wheels would have had a much longer life than one running metal on metal, but rubber-lined wheels could not be used because the track cable wires were broken and spliced in many places.
A fourth cause was that the structure of the cable used in the NR was round with an 18/12/6/1 construction. This means that the innermost part of the cable had one wire surrounded by six wires, which in turn was surrounded by 12 wires and then 18. This type of cable has a small outer surface area whereas cables available nowadays have a large outer surface area which minimises wear and consequently breakage.
Because the traction rope was in bad shape, it had to be repaired repeatedly and operating time was lost. Splicing and excessive wear reduced the average life of a traction rope from ten to about four years. The main reason for the excessive wear was the metal-to-metal contact between the ropes and the supporting sheaves. A rubber-lined sheave could have been used, but the original design did not allow for adjusting the sheave. Alternatively, a slight modification of the sheave-supporting shaft would have been enough to bring the traction rope into alignment and reduce wear on it. Due to a lack of technical knowledge and expertise, however, not even such minor modifications were carried out.
ECONOMIC DECLINE
The stated objective of the NR was to transport goods from the southern plains to Kathmandu Valley, thus providing transport facilities and economic benefits to the people at large. Besides supplying goods to Kathmandu, the ropeway supplied food grains, fertilisers and construction materials to villages close to the ropeway terminals. The terminals at Dharapani and Nayagaun provided services to people in Phakhel, Markhu and Kulekhani VDCs of Makawanpur District. Likewise, the terminals at Golping and Jurikhet provided services to remote parts of Bhimphedi and Nibuwatar VDCs. Since these villages had no road access and were thus an assured and captive market, the NR was expected to become commercially viable.
Its objectives and economic potential notwithstanding, the NR’s actual financial performance was poor. In the year 1972/73, the agency operated with a profit of over 0.3 million rupees (Table 5.1), whereas twenty years later, from 1991/92 to 1995/96, the agency incurred losses that varied from 1.3 to 6.9 million rupees a year (Table 5.2). This decline reduced the capital needed to buy spare parts for regular (routine and recurrent) and periodic maintenance. The new cables and ropes needed for rehabilitation were not purchased. Maintenance was not timely, and corrective measures to remedy the original design were not undertaken. As a result, the NR became both physically and institutionally dilapidated.
The NR took four hours and 12 minutes to cover the 42 kilometres from Hetauda to Kathmandu. In contrast, a truck took more than 12 hours to cover the 120 kilometres of the Tribhuban Highway. Since the road’s steep gradients and hairpin bends made the cost of vehicle operation expensive, customers opted to use the NR to transport their goods to Kathmandu. When Narayanghat was connected to Mugling in the Prithvi Highway in early 1982, the travel time to Kathmandu from Hetauda via Mugling dropped from 12 to less than eight hours. Suppliers sending consignments to Kathmandu from Raxaul did not use the Ropeway because they had to incur the extra costs of loading and unloading goods at the terminals. Also, by using the Highway, food grains produced in Chitawan District, for example, could be transported directly to Kathmandu without stopping in Hetauda. The volume and types of goods transported by the Ropeway dropped drastically in the 1990s (Tables 5.3 and 5.4). Moreover, the construction of the Kulekhani Dam and its powerhouse in the vicinity of the terminals at Nayagaun and Jurikhet made these areas accessible by road with as little as a half an hour’s walk. As the pattern of transporting goods changed, the NR began to depend almost entirely on transporting cement from the factory in Hetauda to Kathmandu.
The importance of the NR was highlighted whenever landslides triggered by heavy rains blocked roads to Kathmandu. In 1979, monsoon rains washed away bridges and sections of the Prithvi Highway. Heavy rains in 1987 seriously affected the Thankot-Naubise section of the Tribhuban Highway. Likewise, the cloudburst and associated
floods of 1993 caused major damage to bridges, culverts and sections of both the Tribhuban and Prithvi Highways. On all these occasions, the ropeway proved its usefulness.
Roads are built, maintained and rehabilitated by the government; vehicles plying roads pay a nominal tax to the government as road users. The NR, on the other hand, had to repair and maintain its cables and towers, operate carriers and pay for electricity on its own. Coupled with operation, maintenance and management difficulties, the NR gradually began incurring financial losses. Furthermore, the agency had to pay for spare parts in dollars while the revenue it collected was in rupees, whose value decreased considerably over the years.
LEARNING FROM POLICY FAILURES
The NR was a public sector corporation which, in the long-run, suffered from political interference aimed at short-term gains. From hiring people unqualified for the job to a serious lack of political commitment, the failure of the government to provide adequate support meant that NR’s decline was inevitable.
Recognising the contribution that the NR made and its importance, especially in hilly terrain, the NPC incorporated policies and programmes to improve the NR’s services and to extend facilities to rural areas starting from the Fifth Five-Year Plan. Except for allocating money in the budget for the maintenance of the NR, HMG/N provided the organisation with no substantial assistance. When no funding or foreign support for maintenance and rehabilitation was forthcoming, an economical appraisal of the system was carried out. Following this study, HMG/N obtained a grant of ten million French francs, which it allocated for the rehabilitation of the ropeway. When rehabilitation was complete, neither the MoWT nor the NTC conducted an evaluation. Although had one been conducted, it would have identified the degree to which the goal of rehabilitation had been achieved and might have identified any unanticipated consequences. It would have helped assess the conditions under which the system could have become more productive.
One major reason for this official apathy is the flawed institutional structure under which the NR functioned. As Figure 5.3 shows, neither the structure of the MoWT, under which the NR was located, nor the board and internal management structure of the NR were conducive to either policy support from above or innovations from below. NR managers had to cross too many levels to reach the attention of the final decision-makers.
CONCLUSION
The story of the NR is the story of failed institution building in Nepal. Its closure signals the dysfunction of a valuable technology appropriate for the country’s terrain. It is the story of a reluctance to learn and to innovate so that the potential of an investment with multi-faceted benefits could be realised. There are several serious security and strategic reasons why the NR should have been properly maintained. Its importance was evident during the 1993 floods, when the Kathmandu was cut off. The NR could also have reduced Nepal’s dependence on imported fossil fuels and used domestic hydropower. Political actors, however, paid only lip service to this idea. The failure of the NR is, for that reason, a national failure.
A ropeway system generates revenue by transporting goods and people. To meet the needs of ropeways, the government needs to formulate a break-even policy. It is surprising that, in an era marked by the ideology of the liberal market, the government decided to shut down NR rather than make it a candidate for privatisation, which could have created incentives for improving the performance of the NR.* Considerations for new ropeway ventures in the future must include the following:
A culture of maintaining mechanical devices which, due to their moving parts, are sensitive to mismanagement, needs to be inculcated through a concerted support campaign if possible. A risk-reduction and insurance arrangement for rehabilitating ropeways has to be designed and put in place so that they can provide services during times of disaster. The economics of roads must be compared with those of ropeways. This approach must be holistic and include both the full investment costs of all components as well as the macro-economic analysis of carbon-based fuel and hydropower. Such comparisons must be part of the feasibility studies of all future roads in Nepal The impact of interruptions in power supply needs to be considered, especially for long-distance ropeways, and contractual responsibilities for losses must be borne by the electricity supplier.
* Even when the ‘privatisation’ fad was at its height in the 1990s, no effort was made by the government to try this model of management even though a study to do so had been conducted in the mid 1980s. See Chapter 3 for a description of the proposed privatisation study. It is not that the private sector was not interested.
By: SHYAM SUNDAR SHRESTHA
Source: Ropeways in Nepal
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