BIAL HSRL back in focus

HSRL is cheaper and ideal: Sreedharan S Praveen Dhaneshkar,P M Raghunandan,DH News Service,Bangalore: DMRC Chief E Sreedharan has warned the State government that any talk of an alternative to high speed rail link to Bangalore International Airport at this juncture, would dissuade and discourage the private companies, which have come forward to implement the project. “The government should never think of a metro to the airport in the present context and once the HSRL is in position, there will be no need for a metro at all,” he stated in the letter to the CM. According the DMRC MD, HSRL costs only Rs 3,800 crore, while metro to BIA costs at least Rs 5,000 crore. Moreover, the government has to make huge investments as equity for metro, while HSRL is proposed on public private partnership model and the government would spend only a small amount. 13 REASONS FAVOURING HSRL *HSRL is cheaper than metro *Metro needs large scale land acquisition *Metro travel time from city to BIA is one hour, HSRL 23 minutes *Metro cannot be implemented under PPP model *Metro not ideal for connecting far off places like BIA *Metro cannot have check-in facilities *Metro connecting airport in other countries hardly patronised *Metro to airport is not part of CTTP plan *Metro needs heavy subsidies, HSRL does not need any. *HSRL doesn’t need much land as it runs on pillars *Metro is viable only if the ridership is over 25,000 per hour per direction *With B’lore getting into the league of major international cities, HSRL is unavoidable * Any talk of alternative will de-rail proposed HSRL source: http://bangalorebuzz.blog...