Rosa Abraham, a resident of Yeshwantpur, who works as a researcher in a private institution in Sarjapur, is among the hundreds of commuters who travel to work every day by the Yeshwantpur-Hosur DEMU train. For her and several others, this train is a boon when it comes to cutting down their travel time.
However, despite the demand, the potential of this suburban train service is grossly underutilised, say commuters.
To highlight their demand for a more robust suburban rail service, volunteers from Citizens for Bengaluru (CfB) conducted a survey of this train route on Friday with the aim of understanding travel patterns, and benefits and issues faced by commuters.
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Srinivas Alavilli of CfB said the whole point was to create awareness about the route so that more people could make use of them.
The survey comes ahead of the launch of the ‘Modalu Rail Beku’ campaign by the civic group next week. A list of demands, based on feedback from commuters, will be compiled and submitted to the State government. An online survey has also been launched.
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Suraj Chhabria, one of the volunteers, said that a majority of the people they spoke to wanted the frequency of the trains to be increased, and for the railways to ensure that the trains were on schedule.
Archana Prabhakar, another volunteer, added that commuters also expressed inconvenience about parking space. The cost of parking their vehicles near the station was more than that of the train journey itself, which defeated the purpose of affordable transport.
Volunteers from the team met Chief Secretary T.M. Vijay Bhaskar on Thursday with a request to the State government to implement the suburban rail system at the earliest.