BENGALURU: An online campaign to run suburban rail services on the existing rail infrastructure in the City was launched on Thursday on a popular petition website--change.org. By 9 pm, it had garnered 2,266 signatures.
‘Bengaluru Agenda for Mobility’-- a citizens campaign for sustainable, multi-modal, and integrated mobility in Bengaluru, urged netizens to get on to the #BengaluruSuburbanNow campaign. The petition was addressed to PM Narendra Modi, Chief Minister Basavaraj Bommai, Railway Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw and Railway Board Chairman & CEO Suneet Sharma among others. It met with a good response on Twitter too with many spreading words about it.
Billing Bengaluru’s Rail Network as “a sleeping asset”, the petition said that utilising it fully could address more than half of the commuting needs in the City. The network passes through almost 75% of its geography, it added. “Hyderabad and Nagpur have done it.
They have used the existing tracks through intelligent signalling and control rooms, and launched suburban rail services without announcing any major suburban rail project,” it said. Stating that the City needed immediate relief, it pointed out that the Rs 23,000-crore project announced by the government required new infrastructure which would take between seven to 10 years to materialise.