On a good day, the journey from anywhere in the heart of Bengaluru city to its airport in Devanahalli takes about two hours. Enter a couple of the traffic jams that the city is infamous for, and the duration is anybody’s guess. Most citizens have all their hopes pinned on the upcoming metro network in the city that has been touted—with much pomp and show—as the answer to all of Bengaluru’s traffic woes. But can Namma Metro really take the load off the city’s much abused roads?
The projected number of commuter trips in Bengaluru per day is all set to reach the grand figure of 23 million by 2031. However, the metro at full capacity will only be able to handle 1-1.5 million trips. The roads today are already clogged with only about 5 million trips occurring through private vehicles. So, how is the metro equipped in any way to deal with the kind of numbers projected for the future? What the city could really use instead is a heavy-duty transport system with more utility, even if it lacks the sleek lines and cool metal interiors of Namma Metro. Interestingly, such a structure already exists.
Almost 200km of railway lines criss-cross their way in and around the north, east and west of the city, including a route to Devanahalli, eliminating the need for the current plan to construct a metro line to the airport. All it would need to be up and functional as the city’s main form of transport are a few infrastructural upgrades. However, the fascination and lionisation of the metro seems to have made the city, its officials and its people blind to more viable options. True, the metro could potentially reduce a lot of the congestion in the city, but not if metro lines are built parallel to already existing railway lines as they are today, instead of prioritising areas without such alternatives.
The cure that Namma Metro is advertised as certainly comes with a fair share of side effects—the expensive construction process is disruptive to a city whose roads are already bursting at the seams, in addition to having an extremely large carbon footprint. Several trees are being cut and several businesses have been affected as buildings are being demolished to make space for the structure. Lack of urban planning by experts has also led to inefficient designing in several places. All of this is without even considering the fact that the lines are being wasted along routes that already have railway lines.
On the contrary, there are several benefits to revamping the commuter rail system. Most of the infrastructure already exists, meaning the plan can be executed in as little as a few months. It doesn’t need much new land, saving several areas from encroachment and several trees their lives. It also needs only a small proportion of the budget allotted for the metro and will cause much less inconvenience to citizens in the process of setting up.
So, when this seems like the obvious option, why wasn’t it the preferred route in the first place? “For a city’s transport system to be efficient, it needs an autonomous local self-government composed of individuals who understand the nature and the needs of the city who can then make appropriate structural decisions on behalf of its citizens. It also requires that the various transport authorities are integrated into a single body that can then optimise existing resources so that they complement, instead of compete against, each other. Both of these are more or less lacking in Bengaluru. Most of the city’s transport authorities are islands, working in isolation and motivated by self-interests, unaware of the working of other systems,” says Sandeep Anirudhan, founder of Aikyam Community for Sustainable Living. Moreover, the city’s obsession with “innovative” concepts like the metro and the monorail seems to have left no space for systems that are actually useful.
The plan to introduce a circular railway in the city has actually been in the works since 1987. Over the years, it got pushed to the background in order to make way for projects like the metro. Since 2010, however, organisations like Praja-RAAG have been actively campaigning for the commuter railway system in the form of the Namma Railu movement.
In the first phase of the plan that they have proposed, the frequency of trains is to be increased in order to cover basic routes more reliably. The second phase would require the setting up of an integrated commuter rail authority that would have the power to make decisions independently of the governments at the Centre and the state.
The Namma Railu movement got a big boost last year when the Citizens’ for Bengaluru group protested against the steel flyover. They proposed the commuter rail as an alternative to solve the traffic crisis and held several demonstrations to get their point across. Petitions were submitted to the chief minister and the railway minister, as a result of which, about ₹340 crore have been allotted in the cabinet that will be used for the execution of the first phase of the plan.
“Creating an independent authority for the commuter railway will be a bigger challenge because of the on-going disputes between the Centre and the states. Similar projects in other states have so far been handled 50-50 by the Centre and the states. After this particular appeal, the Centre has suddenly decided that the state must contribute 80 per cent of the required funding. This is particularly unfair to a city like Bengaluru that is already crumbling under the weight of its traffic,” says Sathya Sankaran, a founding member of Praja-RAAG.
This dispute between the Centre and the state, and the lack of an integrated transport authority for the city are not the only obstacles in the path of establishing the commuter rail. Citizens are largely unaware of the existence of such a system and seem to be too carried away by the fanciful notion of the metro to question its potential. The other transportation islands, such as the BMTC and Namma Metro itself, and their stakeholders also appear to be slowing the progress of the Nammu Railu campaign for fear of losing ridership and/or other kickbacks from the construction process. Some experts who have studied the intricacies of the scenario are also of the opinion that the Karnataka government is not persuasive enough with the Centre and is squandering opportunities that it may have.
As of now, there are about 13 commuter trains doing about 26 trips a day. However, their services are not being used optimally because there is no proper timetable being followed. There is no differentiation between commuter and interstate trains and in case of a delay, interstate trains are prioritised; as there is no proper system, there is barely any accountability, making the system highly unreliable for commuters looking to get to places inside the city on time. Additionally, the lack of adequate last mile connectivity from the railway stations is also discouraging citizens from using the trains.
Apart from appropriate marketing and advertising, differentiation from the interstate trains is probably the most important infrastructural upgrade needed currently for commuter trains. These trains should ideally have bigger doors and optimised seating for short journeys; the single doors and sleeping berths of the interstate trains can in no way constitute an efficient intra-city transportation system. Experts also believe that the Indian Railways is just scraping by on the existing infrastructure, and that upgrades such as automatic signalling systems (as opposed to the manual ones in use currently) will be beneficial not just for the commuter rail, but for the larger interstate network as well.
As far as the future of Namma Metro is concerned, building it for long distances (such as to the airport) is an extremely inefficient use of resources and a wastage of time. It would make far more sense to focus on building dense metro networks within areas of the city that lack railway lines (such as the south); ideally the metro should cut across the railway network and not run parallel to it. Employing qualified urban planners equipped to study land use patterns and project requirements for the future will also go a long way in decongesting the city’s roads.
To conclude, Sathya Sankaran offers an interesting analogy. “Ultimately, congestion cannot be eliminated in a big city and it probably shouldn’t be. The focus should not be on creating more space—that will only induce people to buy more private vehicles. It should, instead, be on configuring systems to move the existing population more efficiently. Transportation is an urban planning problem and its solution must have an integrated approach. It’s quite like building and organising a house. Right now, we’re buying a sofa because we like it and are trying to build the room around it. It would make more sense to look at your house and see if it actually has space for a sofa or if a chair would suit it better.”
