[Pics] Bangalore Metro’s Underground Section Nearing Completion

Yesterday, the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. gave a tour of 3 of its 5 upcoming underground stations on the Purple line to K.J. George, Karnataka’s Minister for Bengaluru Development and Town Planning, and an entourage of media personnel who went trigger happy inside the stations!

I shared and retweeted many of those images via Twitter (@TheMetroRailGuy), and am reproducing them here for the benefit of those not not on it. So here’s a longish post with 21 new images that give a good idea about the progress made on the Purple line’s 4.8 km underground section which was built by a consortium of CEC-SOMA-CICI after winning the contract in March 2010. The Majestic interchange station’s construction was part of a separate contract that was awarded to the Coastal-GYT JV in November 2011.

The 5 underground stations on this section include Cubbon Park, Vidhana Soudha, Sir. M Visveshwaraya, Kempegowda/Majestic and Bangalore City railway station.

Cubbon Park Station

Vidhana Soudha Station

See more images of the entrances and their design philosophy here: Bangalore’s Vidhana Soudha Metro Station’s Entrances Taking Shape

Majestic Station

After multiple overambitious announcements, the BMRC is now aiming to invite the Commissioner of Metro Railway Safety (CMRS) for inspecting this section by the end of this month after which it hopes to open it for commercial use in April.

@hanamantagoud1 we will be ready for the CRMS inspection in the next 8-10 days

— Vasanth Rao (@uavasanthrao) March 15, 2016

There’s clearly quite a lot of work pending at Majestic and the CMRS inspection will not be a cakewalk as this will be the first time it’ll be conducted for an underground stretch in the city.

During the last inspection of Bangalore’s Metro between Mysore Road and Magadi Road for the 6.4 km Reach 2, the CMRS inspected the line in August, gave its approval in September and the BMRCL finally started operations in November after completing interior works at multiple stations. Hilariously, in early November, the CMRS announced to the Economic Times that he hadn’t asked for any operational changes and the delay was purely caused by the BMRCL:

Commissioner SK Mittal told ET that he gave safety clearance two months ago and said they could go ahead with the service any time they want. “I have not asked for any changes and I don’t know why they are not starting the service while people are eagerly waiting for years to board a metro,“ Mittal said.

This is not to suggest that a similar time-frame would be followed here, but just to show that the process in Bangalore can take months for operations to finally begin, especially when work is not 100% complete.

What are your thoughts on an April opening?

For more updates on Bangalore’s Metro, check out the Bangalore section of The Metro Rail Guy!

– TMRG