Namma Metro’s network will be extended from 56km to 170km and its daily ridership is expected to increase to 17 lakh by 2024, said BMRCL managing director Anjum Parwez.
Currently, daily Metro ridership is 3.3-3.5 lakh. Before the pandemic, it was around 5 lakh.
Asked about the status of the Metro corridors, Parwez said: “Challaghatta station (2km Kengeri-Challaghatta extension) will be ready by September 2022 and the 3km stretch of Nagasandra-Bangalore International Exhibition Centre (Madavara) will be operational by October-November 2022”.
The deadline for two corridors —Byappanahalli-Whitefield (15km) and RV Road-Bommasandra (Electronics City) (19km) — is December 2022. “Work on the entire 21km Kalena Agrahara-Nagawara corridor will be over by 2024,” he added.
“Both Whitefield Metro and Electronics City Metro are progressing fast. In fact, we have resolved all land acquisition and tree felling issues between Byappanahalli and KR Puram,” he said.
Parwez said the Outer Ring Road (Central Silk Board- KR Puram) and airport (KR Puram-Kempegowda International Airport) lines are also on track. “We are confident of meeting the 2024 deadline for these two corridors”.
He said completion of Byappanahalli-Whitefield and ORR-Airport Metro will substantially increase daily ridership to more than17 lakh by 2024.
No obstacles for ORR-Airport Line
In May 2021, BMRCL awarded the work order to Afcons Infrastructure Ltd to construct Central Silk board – Kodibeesanahalli (package 1), Shankaranarayana Constructions (SNC) received the contract for the remaining Kodibeesanahalli- KR Puram (package 2). In November, BMRCL awarded the contract to Nagarjuna Construction Company (NCC) in November for all three civil construction packages from KR Puram to KIA.
For BMRCL, normally it will take an average five years to complete a Metro corridor. For instance, 3Km Nagasandra-BIEC section work which began in 2017 and was supposed to be completed by mid-2019 is yet to be over mainly due to land acquisition issues.
“There is no question of delay of the ORR-airport corridor. We have no land acquisition issues. A majority of the land is acquired and handed over to the contractors. We received a favourable order from the high court on felling trees. We also managed to get an NoC from the Government Flying Training School, Jakkur, for the work,” Parwez said.
He said they will be using ‘U-girders’ for constructing the viaduct on ORR-Airport Metro section. “These are readied in the casting yards and brought to the site. Track laying on these girders can be done immediately unlike box-girders or I-girders,” said Parwez.
“For other Metro corridors, delays were due to land acquisition issues. Till two weeks ago, SNC completed 125 piles while Afcons completed piling at 118 locations on ORR sections. Work is progressing really fast on ORR and construction for the airport line will also gain pace in the next few weeks” said Parwez.
