BENGALURU: In spite of the recent addition of two six-coach trains to Metro’s Yelechenahalli-Nagasandra Green Line on December 2, a majority of commuters want all the trains on the route to have six coaches. Out of the 23 trains on the Green Line, only eight have six coaches, whereas all the 20 trains on the Mysuru road-Byapanahalli Purple Line have six coaches. Lakshmi Balaji, a resident of Kanakpura, who has been commuting on the Green Line carried out a survey. Some of the questions posed in survey were: Do you use Metro’s Yelechanahalli-Nagasandra line? Will you take Metro often if the number of coaches is increased and less crowded?
And the results showed that about 92 per cent of the respondents use the Green Line and about 98 per cent of them wanted the number of coaches to be increased. And 97 per cent said they would switch to Metro if the number of coaches were increased as the trains would become less crowded. As many as 60 per cent of the respondents said they would use Metro during 7.30 am-10.30 am.
Lakshmi who takes Metro at Yelechenahalli everyday and gets down at Majestic found that 1.5 lakh people use the Metro everyday on the Green Line and that there is a huge rush during morning hours.
“People keep pushing one another and there is no place to stand. Many a time, people stand at the door. And there is no six-coach train at 7.30 am from Yelechenehalli towards Nagasandra. It is only from 8.30 am... Even the time gap between some of the six-coach trains is 20 minutes. BMRCL should make all of them six-coach trains,” she said.
Another commuter SKV Prasad said, “I have tried taking trains from Lalbagh West Gate to Nagsandra and even from Majestic. But all the time the coaches are full. BMRCL is saying they are increasing the number of coaches during peak hours. I do not know which peak hours they are talking about, because there are no six-coach trains during peak hours.
Even the frequency is six minutes and we want it to be three minutes.”
Abdul Aleem, another commuter, said, ‘’Metro calculates its frequency based on the calculation of 8 persons/square metre inside the train. This base assumption should change and BMRCL should stop looking at us as sheep. That’s when you can expect people to start moving from private transport to Metro”.