BANGALORE: With a focus on how the Bangalore Metro will soon become the backbone of work force movement in the city, experts from various fields got together at the Global Initiative for Restructuring Environment and Management Destination Bangalore seminar.
Real estate intelligence experts focused on how realty had boomed in 1 km radius along the Metro corridor.
“The Metro is providing better connectivity and reducing travel time for Bangaloreans, but development of reasonable social infrastructure is not happening. The last park was built in Bangalore in 1840. The cultural life of the city is dead,” said V Narasimhan, managing partner, Venkataramanan Associates and a key panelist.
Suggesting solutions for this problem, experts said that post completion of the Phase I, the Metro will have 40 stations and will cover 42 kms.
“There will be one station per kilometre. It is suggestible that the authorities look at creating walking space and other social infrastructure on half-km radius along the Metro stations. The Metro should provide good connectivity by building skywalks and subways,” said Dr Ashish Verma, assistant professor, Department of Civil Engineering and Associate Faculty, CiSTUP.
Girish KS, senior VP - Strategic Consulting, Jones Lang LaSalle, a renowned real estate intelligence firm said, “Growth always follows infrastructure. There is a massive interest in sourcing real estate space 1-km along the corridor. Post completion, the transport cost of the city would go down and the value appreciation of all places in the 1-km surrounding radius of the Metro corridor will happen. We have a good example in the Delhi Metro, where both rental and capital value appreciation went up by 25 percent.” Experts emphasised that Metro should have been an underground project.
“The value of Metro will go up if the middle section that is about 20 km is improved. The above ground section should be ready in 24 months. We need to think about the city in a spatial way. Metro was planned for Bangalore in the 1996 five year- plan. The project should focus on building social infrastructure,” said Ashwin Mahesh, ABIDe member.