Bengaluru Metro’s Purple Line links east and west

After enormous efforts to cut through hard rock, the metro corridor was inaugurated on Friday, and will commence operations from Saturday.

Bengaluru: Metro workers give finishing touches at Underground Cubbon park metro station in Bengaluru on Tuesday. PTI Photo by Shailendra Bhojak (PTI4_26_2016_000182B)

Namma Metro is trending on Twitter, and with good reason, too. After many delays and broken deadlines, citizens will finally get to travel in South India’s first underground segment of the Namma Metro’s Purple Line, which connects Bengaluru east to the west.

After enormous efforts to cut through hard rock, the metro corridor was inaugurated on Friday, and will commence operations from Saturday.

The Purple line (17.34 km), as the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation calls it will be the key transportation corridor in the city, connecting several tech parks to residential areas.

Less commute time

From end to end it promises to cut commuting time, when compared to traffic choked roads by over an hour. It links Baiyappanahalli in the east with Mysuru Road in the west, and covers the main City railway station.

Commuters will get to experience how mass public transport can be a viable alternative to travelling in their own vehicles and getting stuck in traffic jams.

“We are expecting a footfall of two lakh passengers in the near future. The linking of the two reaches with the underground section and the Kempegowda Interchange Station is what a lot of people were waiting for,” a senior BMRCL official said.

Saturday’s launch of commercial operations will have several firsts for the city and for BMRCL. The underground section is the first such to become operational in South India and will feature at its centre, the Kempegowda Interchange station, which, with a 10 acre total covered area, will be the country’s biggest metro station.

“It took one lakh cubic metres of cement to build this station. It has 12 staircases, 18 escape routes, 24 escalators and is 365 metres long for the Purple line and 300 metres long for the Green (north-south corridor) line,” said Managing Director Pradeep Singh Kharola.

With more than 60 lakh vehicles in the city and a population of more than one crore, some commuters are sceptical about the utility of the metro project, considering the delays in construction. BMRCL estimates a daily footfall of 10 lakh once the entire phase one becomes operational, but others say this is just a drop in the ocean, considering the total population.