Global railway companies have emerged the top contenders on technical parameters for the country's first railway station modernisation and operation project in New Delhi, the first of private-public partnership schemes.
The railway companies on the eligible list include state-owned Russian Railways, which operates 85,000 km of railways in that country, the $25-billion Deutsche Bahn AG, a subsidiary of the German National Railways, state-owned China Railways 18 Bureau Group, and government-controlled Grandi Stazioni SPA, which runs 13 major railway stations in Italy.
All these international companies have tied up with local partners to bid for the Rs 6,000-crore New Delhi railway station modernisation project. The successful bidder will modernise infrastructure at the passenger terminal, which handles 0.3 to 0.35 million passengers a day.
Traffic is expected to grow 4 per cent annually. The plan also includes real estate development on about 86 hectares of land comprising the railway station, offices, parking, public spaces and commercial blocks.
The company will also operate the station for a stipulated time period that will be fixed during the financial bidding.
The railways will select six companies on the basis of their scores (based on a complex formula that includes years of experience, net worth and turnover among other criteria) in the technical bid, after which they will be called for a financial bid.
Deutsche Bahn AG, a German national railway company with over 200,000 employees, and an annual turnover of more than $25 billion and serving two billion passengers, tied up with Indian Mumbai-based realtor DB Realty Pvt Ltd. The consortium has emerged with the highest score in the technical qualification.
The Grandi Stazioni SPA consortium has renovated Italy's 13 largest railway stations and several major European railway stations.
China Railways 18 Bureau Group, which in third place, has also built highways and rail projects in the UAE, Thailand and Sudan among others.
Russian Railways has tied the knot with Delhi-based DS Construction, which recently built the Delhi-Gurgaon highway. Russian Railways, with its 165 subsidiaries and 1.2 million employees, handles nearly 80 per cent of Russia's transportation services and has executed railway network projects in countries like Libya, China and Iran as well as in central Europe.
For the railways the success of the New Delhi station project is crucial since it has announced similar schemes for 22 other stations, Patna, Secundarabad, Bangalore and Bhopal amongst them.
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