BENGALURU: If everything goes as planned, Namma Metro’s Phase-1 is likely to be fully functional by May-end. Metro officials maintain that Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS) might be invited for the inspection of the remaining stretch of the North-South corridor (green line) in the next few days.
A BMRCL official said, “All the tests have been going on and we are getting positive results. We are able to take up the high-speed test as well.
Since the Peenya line is functional, we are able to conduct the tests only at night. We should be able to call the Commissioner of Railway Safety (CRS) for inspection towards the end of this week, and by May we will be opening the stretch for public.”
The East-West corridor from Mysuru Road to Byappanahalli has been functional for some time now, and it is the North-South corridor that has been the major hurdle. It has been partially operational from Mantri Square Sampige Road to Nagasandra, but Chickpet to Puttenahalli is yet to be opened for commercial purpose.
The North-South corridor covers a distance of 24.2 km distance and connects some major hubs.
The BMRCL started its trial runs on one of the elevated corridors between National College and Yelachenahalli in November 2016, after a battery-powered locomotive was used to push the train from Peenya depot to the elevated corridor since the work on the underground stretch was incomplete. It is only by February 2017 that Namma Metro laid the tracks in the underground section and trial runs were started by March 30.
Experts claim that while the sub-system installation are complete and testing is going on, pending RCC and interior finishing works might prevent the line from being opened on the scheduled date. Besides, CRS needs time in giving the safety certificate.
Earlier, Bengaluru Development Minister K J George has assured that Phase-1 will be functional by April- end.
The cost of Phase-1 has escalated by `2,000 crore. The project today stands at `13, 805 crore. The deadlines for Phase-1 have been pushed since December 2012, to December 2013. The trend continued and the deadlines were postponed to March 2015, September 2015, December 2015, November 2016 and then to April 2017.