Morbi tragedy | Roads and bridges sector has much to learn from railway and aviation when it comes to safety

In August 2018, a bridge collapsed in Genoa, Italy, killing 43. Across the developed world, a special drive was launched to assess bridge and flyover safety. Highway operation platforms in India followed suit, key investors in these being international pension funds and other patient investors.

In August 2016, a bridge collapsed in Mahad (Raigad) on the Mumbai-Goa highway, killing over 20. As a response, an Indian Bridge Management System (IBMS) was set up at the Indian Academy of Highway Engineers, Noida.

IBMS is a digital monitoring system for highway bridges across India. It identified many bridges for renovation and replacement in the last few years. Perhaps IBMS coverage can be expanded to include bridges above 100 metres in length in Indian cities with a population above 100,000.

The loss of life of our fellow citizens in the Morbi pedestrian bridge collapse in Gujarat is a tragedy. The cable-suspended swinging bridge over the Morbi river, commonly called Jhoolto Pul, had been renovated recently. Yet, the cables could not take the load of perhaps too many people, and snapped. Fellow Indians plunged to their death. The ongoing enquiry would ensure accountability and future actions within the next few weeks, we hope.

Aviation and Railways 

Similar enquiries are prompt and professional in two transport sectors: Indian aviation and railways. Being under unitary regulatory oversight, feedback is efficiently incorporated at the earliest, as are learnings for future safety measures. Very high priority is accorded to safe operations at airports and aircraft in the air. Indian Railways ensure track alignments at the highest contour line, above the high flood level, and railway lines seldom get flooded. Railway bridges are designed for smooth cross-drainage of water across the widest catchment area.

Many railway bridges across India date back to before 1947. They are monitored constantly. Safety is paramount and processes robust.

Sadly, this is not so for the road transport sector, with a bewildering variety of government entities and regulators at the national, state, city and rural levels. Morbi’s pedestrian bridge was with the local city municipality, not the state Public Works Department (PWD) or the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI). The question is, are even state PWDs or NHAI anywhere close to the safety standards of aviation and railways?

In the highway sector, usually road failure is less dangerous than bridge failure. Roads and highways are largely at-grade, or ground level. Portions of Purvanchal or Bundelkhand expressway caving in due to excess water drainage may not be fatal for users. Concrete ‘structures’ — bridges or flyovers — are in theory designed with adequate safety margins although accidents can occur in the construction phase; recent examples being Kolkata, Hyderabad, Delhi-National Capital Region (NCR), Varanasi and Surat.

Weight Load 

Why do fully operational bridges like the Genoa or Mahad or Morbi collapse? Remember, in March 2019, a foot over-bridge collapsed in Mumbai.

Highway and bridge design incorporates a maximum weight load, say 50 tonnes. Even a 49-tonne vehicle or vehicles would not make the bridge ‘fail’, but a single 51-tonne vehicle would damage the bridge. Airport runways and taxiways too are designed for a specific maximum design load; some very heavy aircraft have damaged the runway in Indian airports.

What can we do for better road and bridge safety beyond media outrage, roving police enquiries seldom leading to judicial convictions, and long-winded technical commissions of enquiry? Here we are not even considering the tremendous loss of human life and trauma from India’s 150,000 road accidents per annum. In the time taken by you to read this article, two Indians have died in a road accident. But here our focus is on ensuring safer bridges and roads being constructed.

The four usual stages from a project to an asset for transport infrastructure (‘caterpillar’ to ‘butterfly’) are:

- project ideation and design.

- securing funding.

- actual construction, and

- operations and maintenance.

Lessons for Roads and Bridges Sector  

The roads and bridges sector can learn from the railway and aviation sector at each of these stages.

At stage 1: After project ideation, prepare a detailed project report (DPR) with technical and financial feasibility. High levels of engineering diligence should go into such DPRs. In practice, for the roads sector, do we see such professional diligence?

Even as the DPR assesses the financial costs, we should ensure that safety measures are not compromised by reducing project cost on such measures. In practice, do we see cost-cutting on such safety measures in roads and bridges?

At stage 2: Once the DPR and project cost is concluded, the funds allotted for such projects should be as per the project report. In practice, after technical approval, the financial approval is usually far lower, leading to cost rationalisations during construction.

Stage 3: Actual construction presupposes a professional procurement process that selects a capable contractor who brings in technical excellence, good workmanship and quality in construction. Many smaller contractors have seen a dramatic rise in their order books over the last decade. However, this has not led to more professional operations. Perhaps aggressive bidding and ‘winner’s curse’ issues are preventing rapidly expanding contracting firms to move up the safety curve and acquire professional excellence.

More so, the capacity of the government counterparty must be revamped. NHAI’s lean structure and better processes created a nationwide highway network in the last two decades. Left to the state PWDs, this would have been challenging. Similarly, processes under the PM Gram Sadak Yojana - the rural roads programme - helped state rural roads authorities construct good quality roads. At the municipal corporations and municipality levels, capacity is even more constrained. Morbi municipality’s capacity to undertake a Public Private Partnership contract for the bridge would be limited. Can we learn from the successes of NHAI and rural roads? Not just for awarding contracts in competitive bidding, but also for construction management.

Post-Construction Maintenance 

Stage 4: Operations and Maintenance (O&M) is all about asset integrity. Preventive maintenance is always better than post-damage work. Indeed, the Morbi foot-bridge was taken up for renovation and maintenance. Did it undergo safety checks before being thrown open for public use? This would never have happened in a railway or aviation project, where post-construction maintenance standards are strictly enforced.

The roads and bridges sector clearly needs to raise safety standards at all stages. One hopes that the enquiry and learnings from the Morbi foot-bridge collapse would include

- Better capacity in the design and construction community.

- Better contracting capacity in the government entities.

- Strict contract enforcement.

Food for Thought 

The Genoa bridge and Morbi foot-bridge had one common element: cable-suspended bridges. Any weight above the maximum design load would snap the cables and lead to bridge collapse. Cable-suspended bridges are a robust option the world over; Golden Gate bridge and Bandra-Worli sea link for instance. And yet, such sudden bridge collapses would not happen in normal concrete bridges. Food for thought.

Shailesh Pathak is Director, Indian School of Public Policy, New Delhi. He has earlier served as CEO of a highways company in the L&T Group, and was Secretary, PWD, in a state government. Views are personal, and do not represent the stand of this publication.