BENGALURU: The State government has asked the Railways to consider running Diesel Electric Multiple Unit (DEMU) services from Yeshwantpur to the Kempe Gowda International Airport (KIA). The remarks were made during a high-level meet involving State government, Metro and Railway officials at Vidhana Soudha on Friday. Connectivity to airport and prioritisation of suburban services were among the issues discussed. Chief Secretary Subhash Chandra Khuntia, who chaired the meet, told Express, “The Metro link to airport might take three to four years to be completed. The proposed rail link to airport from Yeshwantpur via Yelahanka requires electrification of the tracks. Until that happens, we have asked Railways to consider running DEMU services f from Yeshwantpur till Chikkaballapur.”
To cover the 3 kilometre distance from Yeshvantpur till the airport, we can have shuttle services, the Chief Secretary said. “Yeshwantpur has the rail capacity in place. What we need are more platforms. We can consider having an elevated platform here to facilitate services to the airport,” he said. This could be a bit costly, he added. “The possibility of a third and fourth railway line between Cantonment railway station and Whitefield were also discussed,” the CS said. Whitefield is heavily congested and it could help, he added.
Suburban services discussed
“At present, only 1.5 lakh passengers use the surface transport services,” he said. The steps that needed to be taken to introduce additional passenger services between the City and outskirts were also discussed. In a detailed presentation, the Bangalore Railway Division explained that 94 short distance services are being run by Railways in and around Bengaluru, an official release said. “To run additional services, infrastructure of present network needs to be augmented in a big way with doubling/quadrupling of Railway lines, Electrification and automatic signaling,” the release said. The Railways also requested the State government to develop approach roads to the new Baiyyappanahalli terminal under construction and the Banaswadi stations where suburban trains would be stabled. Cost sharing model for certain infrastructure works like Doubling of Hosur - Baiyyappanahalli line, two additional lines between Cantonment and Whitefield and the doubling of Hebbal line were discussed, the release said. Meanwhile plan for conversion of existing services to Mainline Electric Multiple Unit (MEMU) will continue.