Travel is really light here, minus even tickets!

Travel is really light here, minus even tickets!
Deccan Herald

Even for a person quite familiar with Bangalore City, reaching Bay-yappanahalli railway station is not so easy. Direction boards are conspicuous by their absence. Even landing bang at the station’s entrance, next to the NGEF in Bangalore east, one would not be any wiser - all that one would see is a narrow bridge-like construction that takes passengers to the station!

Including the Bangalore-Jolarpet Express, Bangalore-Chennai passenger and Mysore-Tirupati passenger, eight trains pass through the station every day. It handles over 800 passengers a day. As it is located close to CV Raman Nagar, Kagga-dasapura, NGEF Layout and Kasturi Nagar, passengers residing in these areas get down here, thus minimising the rush at the Bangalore City station.

No basic amenities


Once you make it to the station, you find the Railways hasn’t given much thought to improving basic amenities. All you’ve is a shelter and a single tap for drinking water.

With no toilets in sight, passengers make ‘generous’ use of the surrounding areas. Interestingly, there is (freeloaders, please note) no ticket-checking staff at the station and, surrounded as it is by many ‘exits’, passengers nip in or out ‘freely’.

However, whether they know it or not, passengers who fetch up at this station have in fact a better public transport facility.

Two BMTC bus stands -- for those heading for the City centre and others bound for Kasturi Nagar, Kaggadasapura and surrounding areas -- are close-by. But, then again, don’t waste your time looking for boards, telling you these are ‘at hand’, either at the station or its premises.

Terminal ambitions

Senior Railways Divisional Commercial Manager S Gagarin says, “Right now Bayyappanahalli is a small station with only short-distance trains having a halt here. Few passengers depend on it. But keeping in view the growth of the City in areas surrounding the station, “we plan to develop it as a third terminus within the City limits after the Bangalore City and Yeshwanthpur stations”.

Once the station turns a terminus, “a few trains can be started from there itself”. Gradually, basic amenities will also be provided and within a year it will become a model station.

Moreover, this would help minimise the rush at the Bangalore City station, as passengers from areas surrounding the station need not come to City station. So thinks Mr Gagarin.

Asked why the crush at the Bangalore City station can’t be minimised by making long-distance trains stop at Bayyappanahalli, he says: “I agree. But if we go on stopping trains at all stations, a train from Bangalore City would take three hours to reach K R Puram”.

STATISTICS

800 passengers a day

Earns over Rs four lakh per month

8 pairs of trains pass through

No parking place, toilet, ticket-checking staff

In a jam

Among other things, the station has no parking space. Passengers coming to the station by vehicles, have to park them on the adjacent road. Whenever trains arrive, autorickshaws queue up on this road, leading to traffic jams.