Former BDA advisor suggests grade metro

Former BDA advisor suggests grade metro
Saturday June 28 2008 09:49 IST

Monica Jha

BANGALORE: The Rs 3000-crore Peripheral Ring Road (PRR) project to decongest the traffic on the roads of the city could go a long way in providing an effective solution if it further makes provision for a metro rail on the median.

“PRR- The City Road for Future” needs some modifications to be futuristic. As the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) prepares to go ahead with the much-awaited PRR plans, discussions on the vision and future of the road are in full swing.

If the width of the proposed PRR is increased from 100 metre to 117 metre and its median from 12 metre to 20 metre, the road could accommodate a surface level metro rail in future, suggests former technical advisor to Bangalore Development Authority, G Ashwatha Narayana.

He has a detailed plan for a 117-metre wide PRR with a median of 20 metre width and 9 metre wide service roads on either sides of the ring road. The median has a provision for two parallel railway lines of 3 metre each, which can accommodate standard or broad gauge.

A platform of 12 metre width can be accommodated in between the two railway lines. A surface level metro is a much cheaper option than an underground or an elevated rail. The cost of underground rail is 25 times the cost of a rail at grade while the cost of elevated rail is five times more.

The huge cost of Namma Metro project (Rs 6,395 crore) can be attributed to the fact that over 95 per cent of the track is either under ground or elevated. Only 0.65 km out of the 41 km line will be at grade.

The proposal for PRR has a provision for 12 metre wide central median, which can be utilised later to build an elevated metro or monorail once 8 metre of the median is utilised for two 4 metre wide storm water drains.

"PRR being circular will provide a low curvature and an average slope of 1 in 720. This will facilitate maximum speed of 100 km per hour," Ashwatha Narayana told this website's newspaper.

At all interchanges and subways foot over bridges can be built to reach service roads. The cost of acquiring extra land (17 metre X 116 km= 19.72 lakh sq m) in the periphery of the city in the current year would be very less as compared to the cost of building an elevated metro rail in future, he emphasised.