Japanese favour underground metro

Japanese ready to offer help for Metro Rail

The Hindu

BANGALORE, DEC. 10. If the proposed Bangalore Metro Rail is mostly underground, it could reduce damage to the environment and inconvenience to citizens during its construction. This is the view of a group of Japanese experts connected with infrastructure building who recently held meetings with the Chief Secretary, K.K. Misra, and officials of Bangalore Mass Rapid Transit Ltd.

The Metro Rail plan with North-South and East-West corridors covering close to 37 km has underground stretches of 6.8 km with the rest either elevated or on road surface level. The underground portion is mostly below Mahatma Gandhi Road and Cubbon Park.

Architect Yushi Kitagawa, Tokyo Software Business Co. President Masamori Sakuma, and Hideo (Henry) Yamafuji, General Manager of Hazama Corporation, a firm of contractors, architects and engineers, said here on Friday that they were eager to visit Bangalore, widely known in Japan as the Silicon Valley of Asia.

"Bangalore lives up to its reputation as an information technology hub but the infrastructure is inadequate. Good roads and transportation are necessary to attract more overseas investors," they commented. The situation here was similar to what other Asian cities such as Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur and Singapore faced 30 years ago. Bangalore is now at a "turning point" as those cities were then.

Natural beauty

The reason why they favoured an underground metro was the natural beauty of Bangalore with its many avenue trees that impressed the Japanese visitors. Mr. Yamafuji, whose firm has constructed roads, bridges and buildings in several countries, said an underground metro system might cost more but damaged the environment the least compared to elevated railways. Underground railways took less time to build.

The BMRTL had shared technical and geological data; the soil and rock conditions favoured an underground railway, and tunnel boring machines were available with Japanese firms and were widely used.

The twin tunnels of 5.8 metre diameter needed for the Bangalore Metro were of a common dimension for such tunnels and not difficult to be built.

Mr. Kitagawa said Yokohoma city in Japan had invited several architects to design the stations along its metro rail and each station was different; this approach could be tried in Bangalore, he suggested. The Japanese experts said Bangalore Metro could get financial assistance from the Japan Bank for International Cooperation; BMRTL is known to have approached bank earlier. The original estimate for the project was nearly Rs. 4,000 crores.

"We will prepare a report based on the information we have and the technology we can offer. If BMRTL invites global tenders, we will participate, offering our technical expertise," Mr. Yamafuji explained.

The Japanese earlier visited the Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor project which they felt was necessary.