Kochi/Chennai: Neema Veliyath lives in her nearly 100-year-old heritage home, also a homestay, on Vypin Island, off mainland Ernakulam. As a long-time 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 re-emerging as an urban mobility solution.
Those days may be returning. As Veliyath’s experience suggests, water is re-emerging 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.
IWAI, established in 1986, is a nodal agency under the union ministry of ports, shipping and waterways. Its mandate is to develop and regulate the country’s national waterways.
Kochi Water Metro was created as a special purpose vehicle in 2021, with the state government owning 74% equity in the company and KMRL owning the remaining 26%. KMRL, in turn, is a 50:50 joint partnership between the government of India and the Kerala state government.
Behind the institutional push lies a question increasingly relevant to India’s riverine and coastal cities: Can water metros become a practical mass transit option and not just a showpiece? And importantly, is it an answer to India’s chronic congestion?
Kochi’s reinvention
For decades before the water metro, Kochi’s mobility across its backwaters depended on the Kerala state’s water transport department, which still runs a modest fleet of cheap but ageing diesel ferries with sparse timetables and basic jetties.
The water metro offers a sharp contrast.
It all started in 2010, when the Cities Development Initiative for Asia, a multi-donor trust fund supported by the Asian Development Bank, worked with the Kochi Municipal Corporation on a pre-feasibility study to explore how improved ferry services could ease congestion and reconnect the city’s scattered island communities. Building on those recommendations, the government of Kerala asked KMRL to prepare a detailed project report in 2015, which subsequently formed the basis for negotiations with the German development bank KfW. It resulted in an €85 million long-term loan that enabled the water metro to take shape.
“We wanted water transport with the same discipline, frequency and safety standards as a regular metro,” Loknath Behera, managing director of KMRL and Kochi Water Metro told Mint.
This meant electric boats, digital ticketing, automated fare collection gates, route numbering, station design and an operational control centre that could manage the fleet like any modern transit system.
The air-conditioned electric-hybrid vessels, designed and built by Cochin Shipyard Ltd after a global tender, carry about 100 passengers and charge within minutes—they use lithium titanate oxide (LTO) batteries. The water metro also emphasizes accessibility, with well-lit terminals and integrated mobility cards that work across both the water and rail metro networks.
The difference from a traditional ferry is striking. And the difference it has made to the city is visible. Ridership has crossed five million passengers, terminals have become new gateways for tourists, and island communities such as Vypin, Bolgatty and Mattancherry—once reliant on sporadic ferries—are now reconnected to the urban core.
Mumbai’s ambition
IWAI has stated that India having a tested reference model in Kochi has made a difference. The locations identified for feasibility studies range from large river cities such as Patna, Varanasi and Guwahati to coastal and lagoon-based regions like Goa, Mumbai and the Andaman Islands.
Among these, Mumbai is not only moving the fastest, but also has the most ambitious plan. Pradeep P., chief executive officer of the Maharashtra Maritime Board, pointed out that the state already runs 36 routes with about 18 million passengers annually, of which 16 million are within the Mumbai Metropolitan Region. This indicates an entrenched commuting culture built around water.
But the existing system is designed almost entirely for short, point-to-point crossings, shuttling passengers in a handful of jetties from one bank to the other, at locations such as Elephanta Caves and the Gateway of India. It does not offer services running along the shoreline or connecting multiple destinations in sequence.
The proposed Amchi Mumbai Water Metro, covering nearly 200 nautical miles with more than 30 routes, represents a very different ambition. The planned routes are along the city’s western waterfront and eastern creeks, linking places such as Versova, Bandra, Wadala, Vashi, Airoli, Kalyan and even the upcoming Navi Mumbai airport.
“The three objectives for the water metro are that it should be accessible, affordable and sustainable,” said Pradeep, who added that the Maharashtra Maritime Board is pushing for electric and hybrid boats for these routes.
The board was established in 1996, under the Maharashtra Maritime Board Act, 1996, as the nodal agency for maritime activities in the state.
With the feasibility study completed, KMRL, through its consultancy service, has been contracted to create a detailed project report that is expected soon. Maharashtra could begin a phased implementation next.
Goa is not far behind. Vikramsinh Rajebhosale, director of the state’s river navigation department, notes that Goa’s inland water transit dates back to the Portuguese times, again.
“Unfortunately, the river transport system was never developed along the river,” he said. Today, 30 ferry boats operate across 18 routes, but almost all run across rivers, linking points like Betim-Panaji or Ribandar-Chorao, rather than along them.
The proposed water metro would change this, creating longitudinal routes from Tiracol and Querim in the north down to Divar, Old Goa, Cortalim and Durbhat, effectively turning Goa’s rivers into a continuous corridor connecting population centres and tourism clusters. Rajebhosale says the feasibility study, conducted by KMRL again, is expected soon.
The cost advantage
For cities evaluating whether a water-based transit system makes sense, the cost equation is hard to ignore. As KMRL’s Behera points out, the capital cost of building a water metro is only a fraction of what it takes to build a rail metro.
A 75km elevated metro network could cost ₹15,000 crore. But a water metro of the same length would cost roughly ₹1,500 crore, he said.
The difference stems from the fundamentals. Rail metros require continuous elevated corridors, viaducts, stations, land acquisition and traffic diversions through dense urban areas. Water metros, by contrast, rely on existing waterways, building only terminals, pontoons, control systems and a fleet of electric boats.
“You don’t have to lay flyovers or roads,” said Sharif Qamar, associate director of transport and urban governance at The Energy and Resources Institute (TERI), a research institute on energy, environment and urban development. “Water is already there and you just have to put vessels on it.”
So, how soon could the first new water metro outside Kochi actually take shape? According to IWAI, if the ongoing techno-feasibility studies are completed by year-end as planned, and if approvals and funding move swiftly, a conservative but realistic timeline for launching a pilot corridor would be sometime in 2027-28.
Choppy waters
India’s interest in water metros coincides with multiple structural challenges that could slow or complicate nationwide expansion. One of the most significant is boat-building capacity. Kochi needs 53 water metro boats for its complete network but currently has only 20 operational vessels. Manufacturing electric-hybrid boats is a specialized, time-consuming process with limited global suppliers.
The cost of procurement has risen substantially, too, from around ₹8 crore per boat during the first tender in 2019 to approximately ₹13 crore now, Behera noted.
A second concern is the diversity of water bodies.
The IWAI Annual Report 2022–23 underlines why inland waterways never became a mainstream urban transport option. Only a small portion of India’s vast water network is actually usable year-round. The report highlighted that many stretches still lack adequate depth, dependable dredging, modern terminals or night-navigation systems.
Qamar emphasizes that each city’s hydrology shapes whether a water metro can work. Some cities, like Kolkata, have perennial rivers, while others, like Panjim, have both navigable rivers and coastal stretches with tidal movements. But there are also places like Patna, where maintaining even the minimum draft is difficult. You need constant dredging throughout the year, Qamar explains, and that becomes a very costly intervention.
Financing and institutional coordination pose further challenges. IWAI shared with Mint that funding will likely involve a mix of state budgets, central government grants, multilateral loans and private participation in operations.
An equally pressing risk is political overreach. Qamar warns that cities may adopt water metros simply because they seem modern and attractive or because another city has done it. “We have seen the same thing earlier with metro rail, where many cities wanted a metro without really looking at whether the demand justified it,” said Qamar. “A water metro should not be a showpiece. It only makes sense where there is real commuter demand.”
Ease congestion?
Whether water metros can meaningfully reduce congestion depends on how various government bodies involved solve the challenges detailed above.
In cities where water routes provide genuine alternatives, like in Kochi, water metros can become the preferred mode. In the Kerala city, the water metro is priced to encourage regular use, with single-journey fares typically between ₹20 and ₹40 depending on distance, and monthly passes at ₹600. What makes it especially convenient is that passengers can use the same Kochi1 smart card, issued by KMRL, to access both boats and trains seamlessly.
However, Behera acknowledges that the system has not yet matured into a commuter-heavy, congestion-reducing network in Kochi. With only 20 boats operating across six of the planned 15 routes, demand is concentrated on tourist-facing corridors.
“More than 80% of our commuters are tourists,” he said, noting how the Fort Kochi and Mattancherry routes require more boats than originally planned, leaving several island-serving terminals underutilized.
The shortfall in boats, and the resulting partial network, means many daily-use routes for local residents are still not operational.
The next boats
Behera says the next wave of vessels may move beyond batteries altogether. Cochin Shipyard has already built India’s first hydrogen fuel-cell boat under a project supported by the ministry of ports, shipping and waterways. The 50-passenger ferry has been deployed in Varanasi, where it completed six months of trials on the Ganga and received clearance from the Indian Register of Shipping earlier this year.
Unlike the water metro’s current boats, which store electricity in large LTO batteries and need to be plugged in for charging, a hydrogen fuel-cell boat makes its own electricity on board. It carries hydrogen in tanks; the fuel cell combines this hydrogen with oxygen from the air to produce electricity, which then powers the motor. The only by-product released is water vapour.
This matters because hydrogen refuelling can be much faster than recharging batteries and gives boats a much longer operating range, allowing vessels to run extended services without lengthy charging breaks.
Nonetheless, the technology is still expensive. The hydrogen fuel-cell ferry built by Cochin Shipyard came at ₹18 crore, far higher than what a battery-electric water metro boat costs. The bigger constraint, however, is supply. India’s green hydrogen production remains limited, and building safe storage and bunkering systems adds another layer of cost and regulation.
But this picture is expected to shift. The government’s National Green Hydrogen Mission, new production hubs at Kochi and other ports, and steadily falling electrolyser and fuel-cell prices could ease the supply chain over the next few years. That, Behera argues, is why hydrogen-powered vessels may eventually become viable for water metro fleets.
“By 2030, our fleet in Kochi could have hydrogen boats,” Behera said.
If costs indeed fall and infrastructure keeps pace, hydrogen-powered ferries and metro-grade boat terminals could become a regular part of urban commuting even in other Indian cities. They can offer the kind of effortless, scenic hop that Vypin’s Veliyath now enjoys.