Bangalore, once a pensioner’s paradise, transformed into a hub of public sector companies and brought in umpteen scientific institutes soon after Independence. Still later, it began to attract major electronic manufacturing firms. In the third phase of industrialisation, it came to be known as India’s Silicon Valley. Today, it attracts India’s brightest engineers and software personnel.
The city has seen exponential growth from a garden city to a teeming metropolis. Burdened with inadequate roads and surfeit of upper middle class has resulted in overdependence on private transport which the city’s infrastructure and environment loathe to face. Negotiating the city’s narrow roads is a nightmare. Fatalities are mounting. Unless the ‘city’s fathers’ wake up and take notice, the city would lose its lure as an investment destination. To be reminded, it is long since it lost its position as a tourism destination.
Bangalore today has the dubious distinction of having 41 lakh automobiles, 74 per cent of them being two-wheelers. Public transport takes up only 30 per cent of the trips made by the people with BMTC travellers standing at about 4.5 million a day. The number who take the Metro is about 25,000 and railways, about 150,000.
An imperative
What is surprising is that Bangalore has not yet tapped the potential of the existing railway network in and around the city. Till some 20 years ago, Bangalore was served with all three gauges — broad, metre and narrow — and lines from five directions converged at the Majestic station. Thanks to the uni-gauge policy, all five directions have now been converted into broad gauge. This makes it imperative that Bangalore integrates the rail network into its commuter system. But the Railways, it is said, was largely indifferent towards the idea, initially. Partly the blame can be directed towards civic planners in Karnataka who never visualised this as a possibility.
Commuter traffic originates from places located within a radius of 30 to 100 km. Road transport or even Metro cannot cater to this need as limitations on road traffic are well known, at least in Bangalore’s context. Today, commuting by road to Kengeri, Hoskote, Anekal, Nelamangala and Hosur claims around 75 minutes from the city centre. These entry points are within 15 to 30 km from the city centre. Curiously, travelling another 70 km on the same routes away from Bangalore would also require the same time.
This being the painful reality, the existing railway network in these directions is thought to be the most effective way to enter or leave the city provided it is served by effective local rail services meant to solely cater to the needs of the people living in the Bangalore Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (BMRDA) region.
One may question if the ‘city’s fathers’ ever thought of using the existing railway network for the daily commuters’ needs? While plans were chalked out to build the Metro at a huge investment of Rs. 38,000 crore, a Commuter Rail Service (CRS) linking these corridors into a network is yet to materialise. Currently work is proceeding on several projects including NICE corridor, Metro Phase 2 together with the extension of Phase 1, High Speed Rail (HSR) rail link to the Bangalore International Airport and the different BRT corridors in the city.
Wilbur Smith Associates’ (WSA) plan for the Bangalore Metro Railway (BMR), if taken together for the next 21 years (i.e., 2035), envisages projects with an investment of Rs. 73,000 crore. In fact, the RITES feasibility report laments that the CRS does not even find a mention in it.
The RITES report titled Implementation of Commuter Rail System (CRS) for Bangalore has therefore proposed development of the existing rail networks for running frequent trains on the four corridors mentioned above.
The Namma Metro, Mono Rail, HSR to BIAL and the rejuvenated BMTC services had so far occupied top priority on the State Government agenda.
All that the RITES report says is that “All this is fine, but they fall short of the demand.”
Easing pressure on hub
The expansion of Bangalore and the industrial sprawl around the city suggests that a commuter should be able to travel 70 to 100 km an hour. It is only then that growth centres such as Hosur, Tumkur, Mandya and Bangarapet will get developed fast and the pressure on the main hub in Bangalore would be eased. Given its limitation of cost and hassles involved in acquiring land and laying down the infrastructure, Metro cannot be expected to reach these growth centres in the foreseeable future. Metro’s trip lengths are bound to remain limited to the extremities of the current core of the city.
