The proposed improvement of road, air and rail connectivity to Mysore continues to remain a distant dream, as projects are still at the planning and conceptual stage.
While road connectivity is most important, the proposal to widen Bangalore–Mysore road to a six-lane highway was mooted recently and may take years to materialise. The Rs. 3,000-crore project envisages acquisition of 500 acres of land and it is anybody’s guess when the land will be acquired, as there are bound to be litigations on compensation issues. A similar road-widening project between Mysore and Nanjangud, which was part of widening national highway 212, is yet to gather pace though it was mooted more than three years ago.
Mysore’s air connectivity continues to be jinxed despite the presence of an upgraded airport. The city had flight services — first by Kingfisher and then by SpiceJet — since the airport was inaugurated in 2010 but both commercial flight service providers withdrew operations citing inadequate passenger load. At present, the airport caters to chartered flights.
C. Manjunath, officer in-charge of the Mysore airport, said efforts were on to get low-cost regional carrier Air Costa to operate to Mysore, but there had been no progress so far. Likewise, AirAsia is another carrier that is being pursued by the authorities without much success so far.
Stakeholders were overjoyed when the Union government identified Mysore-Bangalore-Chennai as a high speed railway corridor. To achieve speeds of 165 kmph to 200 kmph, infrastructure would have to be upgraded to facilitate high-speed train travel, thereby covering the distance between Mysore and Bangalore in less than an hour. However, the results of a preliminary survey this month came as a dampener. As the Mysore–Bangalore stretch has over 135 curves, travel at 165 kmph has been ruled out. But the authorities are toying with the idea of train services at 135 kmph, which can help cover the distance between the two cities in little more than an hour. However, the proposal is still a concept and may take years to fructify.
