No question of setting aside metro rail project: CM

No question of setting aside metro rail project: CM
Business Standard

The Karnataka CM has ruled out shelving the Rs 6,600 crore metro rail project and said that it is aimed at decongesting traffic in the city.

"There is no question of going back on the implementation of the metro rail project," he told a press meet here. However, he assured that he would "look into" the issues raised by JD(S) chief H D Deve Gowda over the project cost.

Bangalore has been identified as one of the fastest growing cities in the world and it needed an international airport and also a transport mode like metro, which has the capacity to transport about 20 lakh passengers daily, he said.

The metro rail project, approved by the Planning Commission, is not in the hands of the state government as it is a central government project, Singh asserted.

The coalition government is bracing itself to face the challenges posed on the infrastructure front in Bangalore and was initiating necessary steps to improve infrastructure, he explained. “Mono rail cannot be an alternative system of transport for metro rail,” Dharam Singh said.

This is the first time Singh has come out openly in favour of the project, after Gowda expressed his reservations on it.

The Metro Rail project will be 33 km long and have two corridors — East -West and North-South.

East-West Corridor will be 18.1 km in length and North-South corridor of 14.9 km. Out of the 33 kms, 6.7 km is proposed to be underground and 26.3 km to be elevated and at-grade.

The total project cost is around Rs 6,600 crore and it is expected to be completed over a five -year period after it kicks off.

This Metro project got embroiled in a controversy after Deve Gowda wrote to the Centre and State to look into other options for mass transportation for Bangalore, with one option being monorail.

Monorail promoters had proposed a Hybrid Monorail System as a complementary Mass Transit System. The alignment for the system has been selected so that it acts as a feeder system to the proposed Bangalore Metro alignment and caters to the IT corridor — Electronic City and ITPL.

The Rs 4,045 crore project plans to cover a total of 86 km across the city in two phases. The first phase will have a total route length of 54.8 km and will connect the south side residential areas with the Central Business District and central portion of the city where high employment density is situated.

Two alignments are proposed in Phase I connecting Jaraganahalli to Cantonment Station covering 18 km and the second one connects Hudson Circle to Electronic City covering 17.7 km and one winging its way to ITPL in Whitefields covering a total distance of 19 km.