The Bengaluru metro rail project is on track and will cover 175 km of commute in the city by June 2025, Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) managing director Anjum Parwez said on Friday.
Addressing a session on ‘Future of Mobility’ at the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2022 (BTS 2022), Parwez said that as part of the second and third phase of the project, Bengaluru will have 314 km of metro rail connectivity by 2041, adding that the construction of metro lines was progressing well on the airport side.
Parwez said that the biggest challenge in urban mobility is the integration of multi-modal transport systems and motivating people to change to public transport from personalised transport modes. “Urban India was the most neglected area until the 1990s as urban planning was not in sync with connectivity or mobility issues,” he said.
Meanwhile, experts pointed out that while the metro does play an important role in decongesting the city, it won’t solve any mobility issues in Bengaluru.
Sandeep Anirudhan, convener of Bengaluru Agenda for Mobility , a civil society group, said the city needs better planning, an integrated public transport and mass transit policy.
“You need an integrated public transport and mass transit policy. We need to first turn the Bangalore Metropolitan Land Transport Authority (BMLTA) Bill into law so that we have an integrated plan for the city for mass mobility as metro keeps doing its own thing. They don’t integrate with anything else…it reduces its utility,” Anirudhan said.
“If everything is integrated end-to-end, then people will stop using private vehicles and go to mass transit…What we need is an integrated approach. We need the entire city’s mobility on one page. So, we need the BMLTA. Once we have this, then we can actually start planning for the city,” Anirudhan added.
The BMLTA bill was tabled before the state Assembly in September this year. It will act as a super-authority and will coordinate with multiple agencies on issues related to traffic and mobility in Bengaluru.
“If we go ahead without any intervention in terms of metro stops or new roads, we will have a serious trouble as the entire city will come to a gridlock. Already there are traffic jams etc.,” another mobility expert said on condition of anonymity.
“The only solution is to see that we have segregated fast public transport. First, focus on public transport. So, the metro will play an important role in ensuring that Bengaluru will survive,” he said.
“The BMRCL are doing a good job. How fast they are doing and whether this will be enough is another question. This may not be enough. Even with the best efforts from BMRCL, we will not have enough number of trains to take enough number of people to pull the network out of congestion,” he added.
