Commuter rail for Bengaluru - state not interested?

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Commuter RailPublic Transport

First up, happy new year 2010 to all. I thought I should pick out one important piece from Sanjayv's summary post on Railway minister's recent announcements for our state. Minister says that the Bangalore-Whitefield-Krishnarajapuram track-quadrupling work could not be implemented as the State Government had not decided on commuter rail transportation and cost sharing.

What do we make of it? Is the state govt not "interested", or has not "yet decided" on the project? Taking the text literally, I would think that it is a case of state govt not having spent quality time thinking about the project and possibilities in detail. We haven't seen details of any cost sharing arrangements for this quadrupling project - the ball must be stuck there I assume.

Incidentally, I was at KR Puram station just this morning to pick up my mom. That place, station right next to two trunk roads, a new Metro station not so far away, is one transportation hub going waste.

Marathahalli is a similar place with rail/bus hub potential. So is Whitefield station, with Kadugodi bus stand right next to it. How close is the Wipro office area on Sarjapura Road to a Railway Line and Station? There is no need to mince words here - it is simply shameful to let all these solution opportunities go waste. Yes, its not easy, an eventual solution would involve state, Railway ministry and most likely a private party. But we are talking about possible solution for the only real and visible problem our dear city has today (relative to others in the country).

It will require some planning and investments (mentioned by lot of members over numerous past posts here):

  • Satellite railway stations (like how you have KSRTC doing satellite bus stations now) to free up the tracks inside the central city area
  • Some rail lines to "ring fence" the city, possibly connecting the satellite stations to further free up long distance rail traffic from going through the city.
  • Even with satellite stations, Byppanhalli-Salem single line would require some doubling work. But this one would perhaps be the only line needing doubling work, all other tracks we would want to use are all double.
  • And then, the usual coordination elements, the Rail/Bus/Metro connection features - subways, scheduling etc.

I don't really want to stop this post here. But I need help - If someone can support, we can draw these "satellite railway stations", and using cost figures from similar railways projects, even put a rough cost to the project to make Commuter Rail viable for the city.

I will try draw up KR Puram and Marathahalli areas using Google Map/Sketch.