B’lore Metro Rolls Out Today

 

 

The metro services will cover only 6.7 km from today; will expand to 42.3 km by 2014

OUR BUREAU BANGALORE

Bangalore is taking a baby step towards solving its most pressing urban infrastructure problem with the launch of a Metro rail service on Thursday, which will be India’s third such after Kolkata and Delhi.
Traversing just under seven kilometres through the eastern part of the city, the socalled ‘Reach 1’ of the Metro is regarded more as a sign of hope than a major contributor to easing Bangalore’s notorious traffic congestion.
Linking the once-fashionable MG Road business district with Baiyappanahalli, the Metro is projected to carry 30,000 passengers a day, with fares ranging from . 10-15. The Delhi Metro, in comparison, has clocked peak traffic of 2 million, and snakes through nearly 200 km of India’s capital and surrounding areas.
“The first ‘reach’ will cater to a limited number of people and is unlikely to ease traffic in the city,” said Pravin Sood, Bangalore’s top policeman in charge of traffic. The subsequent ‘reaches’ totally spanning the 42.3 km, will make a difference when they are completed in 2014, Sood said, who expects vehicular traffic to fall by up to 30% as a result.
A recent global ‘Commuter Pain’ survey by IBM gave Bangalore the dubious distinction of being the worst city in India for commuters. Globally, India’s technology capital ranked sixth worst behind Mexico City, Shenzen, Beijing, Nairobi and Johannesburg.
With its prowess in software, Bangalore helped personify the image of a rising India to the rest of the world. But its infrastructure, particularly the public transport system, has been unable to cope with the needs of a growing city. With a population of 8.5 million, Bangalore has four million vehicles and adds more than 1,300 to their number every day, worsening the congestion on its choked roads.
GR Gopinath, the founder of India’s first low-cost airline Deccan, said that a Metro for Bangalore is better late than never. He suggested a steep increase in parking charges in the central business district to prod people towards the Metro. However, Gopinath, who now runs logistics firm Deccan 360, said Bangalore’s aesthetics have been spoiled by having most of the transit system overground. “It had destroyed heritage sites, scarred the city’s beauty and has thrown life out of gear for people. The Metro will only become viable if it is well networked, having multiple lines, which will reduce congestion eventually,” he said.
But N Sivasailam, the managing director of the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation, said having the entire network underground would have made it prohibitively expensive, adding more than . 4,700 crore to the project’s cost.
After the unqualified success of the Delhi Metro rail service under the leadership of E Sreedharan, many Indian cities are rushing to have a similar rail network. Mumbai, Hyderabad, Kochi, Lucknow, Jaipur and Chennai have all started work on the rapid transit system.
While the Delhi Metro has been a model for the rest, it does not have something that Bangalore Metro has: onboard Wi-Fi internet connectivity, in keeping with Bangalore’s reputation as one of the world’s top technology centres. On the other hand, Bangalore Metro is at least a year behind schedule and its first phase will cost . 5,000 crore more than the estimate of . 6,395 crore. It is only the second phase, which will also involve extensions to the city’s tech hubs on the outskirts, which will make Bangalore Metro a true game-changer.