Namma Metro for Namma Bengalooru

Imagine that you are in Yeshwantpur now and want to go to South End in Jayanagar. The only option (if you don’t own a vehicle and if you don’t want to risk your flawless skeletal structure in a recklessly driven auto-rickshaw) would be to wait for BMTC bus no. 1. If you were born with the right stars at the horizon, you might have to wait only for 20 minutes before you are shoving your way into the bus. And after what seems like passing a million traffic signals and two hours of bone-shaking experience on the pot-holed roads, you finally get down at South End- your body totally exhausted and mind shattered.

Now imagine this: Just down the Yeshwantpur main road, you climb into the modernistic and air-conditioned metro station. A train is due in 4 minutes which gives you just enough time to buy yourself a hot cappuccino at the coffee day outlet. The train arrives exactly on time. You hop into it and even before you have finished the cappuccino, you find yourself in South End.

Well, we all know that its going to be a reality some day. The only question is ‘when’. Just yesterday I was looking at some traffic statistics of Bangalore city. And the projected statistics for 2020 looked very scary. It would be impossible for our roads to handle that amount of traffic unless we widen them. For that thousands of people will have to be displaced. And our voter-minded politicians wouldn’t dare to lose so many voters just to solve the city’s problem. After all, why should they care? There are government-paid helicopters for them.

The amount of exhaust gases that our cars, auto-rickshaws and buses are letting into the Bangalore air is terrifying. One simply cant walk down KG road during peak hour without a hand-kerchief on his nose and mouth. The honking noises at traffic junctions have scared many species of birds for which Bangalore was famous for.

And so the metro seems to be the only solution to the burgeoning problems of India’s fastest growing city. Just consider these facts: super fast travel medium (80 kmph), high frequency trains (one train every 4 minutes), high accuracy, zero-pollution, electrically driven, an annual saving of rs.1500 crores (that’s some money!) etc. And if you are thinking how expensive a ride in the metro could be, for all the benefits that you would be getting, its not much at all. The prices may be fixed at 1.5 times the present bus fares which means the tickets could cost anywhere between rs.7 to rs.15 depending on the distance of travel. As Bangalore slowly begins to travel in the metro, the BMTCs along with the mono-rail will act as feeders to the metro.

As with any big money project in India, the Bangalore metro has had its share of bottle-neck periods. The start of the actual ground work has been postponed numerous times already. The work on Byappanahalli-Mysore rd stretch of the line had to begin in December 2006. But it hasn’t begun yet.

Though they say ‘its never too late’, my skirmish is that we have been already very late and the evidence for that can be found at any traffic jam near you. We need the metro as soon as possible. I have already begun dreaming of Namma Metro for a vibrant and clean Namma Bengalooru. In fact all of us can.