Suburban rail can ease chaos in Bengaluru

The decisive joint push by the Centre and the Karnataka government for the suburban railway project in Bengaluru is a case of better late than never. While demand for the mass transit system has been pending for long, it was only in recent years that the idea gained traction and the governments decided to take it up. And in a sudden but welcome move, Union Railway Minister Piyush Goyal and Chief Minister H D Kumaraswamy sat together on Friday and thrashed out most of the contentious issues. It was agreed that the Centre and the state will equally share the estimated cost of `23,000 crore, and the Railways will part with the land required at almost no cost. Now, if all goes as per plan, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will lay the foundation soon and the project will be operational by 2025.

It’s an ambitious deadline for a project of such a scale—a 160 km network with 70 km of elevated tracks and 83 stations—but doable if governments show resolve and let no hurdle come in the way. The city is in dire need of mass transport systems. While metro rail has certainly helped, it has proved to be inadequate in meeting the city’s demand, and construction of new lines is taking more time than desirable. An indication of the dire inadequacy of public transport systems in Bengaluru is the exponential growth in the number of personal vehicles. The city currently has nearly 80 lakh vehicles, of which 55 lakh are two-wheelers and 16.5 lakh are cars, including taxis. 

A robust and user-friendly public transport system consisting of metro rail, suburban rail and buses is the only solution to Bengaluru’s transport chaos. The authorities can afford to lose no time in putting this in place. However, the hurried meetings and sudden announcements have come just before the general elections and the fear is, given how the proposal has been treated in the past, these may be just poll-time gimmicks. It will be unfortunate if that is the case and the project is delayed any further.