Majestic won’t look the same again

Majestic won’t look the same again
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: Digging has begun for a metro rail station along the walls of Kempegowda Bus Station, and the earth and slush could soon make your life miserable. It isn’t bad yet, but soon could be.

However, once the construction of the commercial complex is done -- and officials say it will be completed in two years -- you will have a swank metro station that could match the best in the world.

The trains of course will come later. The first phase of the metro rail project will be completed only by 2008. But you could be shopping in the station’s commercial complex by early 2006.

Twenty-five contractors are bidding for the contract, which will be awarded by December. The proposed 31-acre Inter Modal Transit Centre at Kempegowda bus station, with a metro terminal and various bus terminals, will have a 40-storey commercial complex.

It will have food courts and amphitheatres. By December, the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation (BMRC) will zero in on who will build it. The complex will sit on two layers of transport systems.

At one level there will be an underground metro rail and at another Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) and Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) bus stations.

“The contractor will have to begin the BOOT (Build Operate Own and Transfer) project early next year,” said Jagadeesh Chandra, Chief Civil Engineer of the KSRTC.

The idea, say officials from the KSRTC, is to turn Kempegowda bus station a nodal point of all travel.

With the KSRTC building new satellite bus stations and improving 31 existing bus stations in and around the city, the Inter Modal Transit Centre could make Bangalore a well-networked city.