BENGALURU: While Bengaluru waits with bated breath for a swanky suburban railway network, which is planned with better safety features, a senior railway official who has seen the entire journey of the Suburban Rail for Bengaluru from the window seat, says, “Finally, a beginning has been made. And it is a good start. But I will say it is very, very late in the day.”
As the network is being planned with better trains, the fares will be higher than the Mumbai, Chennai or Kolkata suburban trains. A minimum fare of Rs 13 and a maximum of Rs 100 was proposed by Railway Infrastructure and Technical Engineering Services (RITES), the consultancy firm, which was approved by the Union Government on Wednesday.
The former top official, who is still involved with railway projects post retirement, recalls that the first Transportation Survey was commissioned by the State Government, headed by R Gundu Rao, in 1983 to explore all possible forms of mass transport options for the City. A 58-km stretch, with three circular routes, was proposed by an expert team from the then Southern Railway.
And then it was forgotten. The IT boom slowly began in the city. “A decade later, the same proposal was proposed by another group which carried out a survey,” said the former official who did not want to be named.Meanwhile, during that period, vital infrastructure projects began taking shape — the International Tech Park at Whitefield, the Outer Ring Road Project, cable-stayed bridge at Krishnarajapuram, etc.
‘Former CM had foreseen city’s transport needs’
“I recall the proposals put forth by a few experts before then Chief Minister S M Krishna around 2000 — the Light Rail, the Sky Bus or the suburban rail,” the official said. The then CM told the expert team, “Let us not reinvent the wheel. We can have a Metro on the lines of Delhi Metro which is already very successful,” he recalled.“Since I was among the few in the Railways who knew Kannada, I got an opportunity to participate in all high-level meetings convened by the state government, on behalf of my organisation,” the official added.
Very keen on putting strong transport infrastructure in place, Krishna had urged the Railways to take steps to lay railway tracks at important locations so that they could be used in future. “He paid two-thirds of the cost for two key railway projects, including the Bengaluru-Kengeri line doubling, so that it was ready for the future. He had the foresight that the city was booming and the need for trains to connect the outskirts of the City,” the official said. “Later, there was much focus on creating a Metro system and the suburban rail network was put on the backburner,” he added.
“The constant political instability in the state should be blamed for the lack of progress on the suburban rail project. Successive governments were only keen on retaining power. The project was almost shelved,” he rued. Citizen groups need to be lauded for the big noise they created which put much pressure on the BJP to revive it before the 2019 Parliamentary polls, he felt.