Too late! Namma Metro to miss its date on east-west corridor

Bengaluru: It looks as though the people of Bengaluru will have to wait longer for the entire metro east-west corridor -- that is, from Mysore Road to Byappanahalli, to become functional. BMRCL officials claim that the stretch will be thrown open by the end of February; however, initially it was scheduled to be open by January first week.

Currently, communication and signaling testing is going on at the underground stretch of the east-west corridor.

Speaking to Deccan Chronicle, Vasanth Rao, spokesperson of BMRCL said, “We are waiting for the testing report. The report should come by the third week of January and then the Commissioner for Railway Safety will come for spot inspection. We are anticipating that inspection should be finished by February first week and hence by February last week, we will be able to open the stretch to the public - hopefully!”

Initially, the line was scheduled to go commercial by November 2015, then it was pushed to December 2015, after that to January 2016 and now finally to February 2016. Ministers like K J George including the Chief Minister have time and again affirmed that the entire east-west corridor will be functional for the public at least by January.

The cost of Phase 1 has escalated by Rs 2000 crore. The project today stands at Rs 13, 805 crore. Until now only metro has opened in pieces, there are just five small stretches opened for the public, namely Reach 1 (MG Road to Byappanahalli, 6.7km), Reach 3 (Sampige Road to Yeshwanthpur, 5.1km), Reach 3a (Yeshwanthpur to Peenya Industry, 4.8km), Reach 3b (Peenya Industry to Nagasandra, 2.5 km) and Reach 2(Magadi Road to Mysore Road, 6.4 km). Four major lines are yet to be completed and open for the public, namely, Reach 4 (National College to Rashtreeya Vidyalaya Road), Reach 4a (Rashtreeya Vidyalaya Road to Puttenahalli), UG 1 (North-South underground line) and UG2 (East-West underground line). It will be interesting to see if BMRCL will be able to meet the deadline of June 2016 and finish the work of Phase 1 on time.  
 

 

 

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