BMRCL to Inaugurate EW UG on April 29 ; Commercial Ops Begin on 30th
It’s now official! After mindless hearsay and numerous incorrect reports which claimed to have confirmed the dates straight from ministers, we finally have a date. Strike that…make that two dates. 😀
BMRCL’s General Manager of Finance yesterday evening announced that the east-west Purple Line’s 4.8 km underground section between Magadi Road and MG Road with 5 stations will be inaugurated on April 29 (Friday) with commercial operations starting on the 30th (Saturday).
Inaugural of the E-W corridor scheduled on 29th at 6PM venue: Vidhana Soudha
— Vasanth Rao (@uavasanthrao) April 24, 2016
@ananda_nadig commercial operation from 30th April
— Vasanth Rao (@uavasanthrao) April 24, 2016
Purple line’s underground section – view Bangalore Metro map and information
The 5 underground stations on this section include Cubbon Park, Dr. BR Ambedkar Vidhana Soudha, Sir. M Visveshwaraya, Majestic and Bangalore City railway station.
Existing – 3 fragmented stretches totaling 25.5 km
After – 2 fragmented stretches totaling 30.3 km
Facts:
• The line will be inaugurated on April 29 at 6 pm by M Venkaiah Naidu, India’s Urban Development Minister, and Siddaramaiah, Karnataka’s Chief Minister. On April 30, commercial operations will begin at 6 am with trains flagged off from either end of the line – i.e. Mysore Road and Baiyappanahalli.
• This will be the Purple Line’s last section to open in the 42.3 km Phase 1 project. The line will become 18.1 km long with 17 stations, and users will able to travel between Mysore Road station and Baiyappanahalli station in roughly 33 minutes at a cost of Rs 40. This will revolutionize east-west transit and boost BMRCL’s operational performance which has been quite poor due to fragmented operations.
• Tunneling work on this stretch was completed on March 17 2014 with TBM Helen making a breakthrough at Majestic station from the City Railway station. Unlike the Green Line, the Purple Line didn’t have any TBM breakdowns or tough tunneling conditions. That said, it’s always amusing to see geology being blamed for the delay by BMRCL officials. FYI – Track-work inside the tunnels was not complete until October 2015!
• Users will not be able to use their phones inside the stations and trains within the tunnels as the BMRCL didn’t incorporate the installation of cell sites & necessary equipment while other works were going on. On this Friday, they finally invited bids, so it’ll be another 6 months for users to get a signal.
• The City Railway Metro station currently has no access to the railway station. A Foot Overbridge (FOB) planned to connect with the station is not yet ready and will only open towards the end of the summer. Users can however use the nearby Majestic station to access all platforms. Hopefully the BMRCL has planned announcements for this.
• Earlier this month, the Vidhana Soudha Metro station was renamed to ‘Dr. BR Ambedkar Vidhana Soudha’ which is quite long, unfriendly & unnecessary to begin with.
• This will be India’s 4th underground metro corridor. Journalists have either forgotten or just don’t have the knowledge that besides Kolkata & Delhi, Jaipur Metro also consists of a 950m underground stretch at Chandpol which is currently being extended by 2.35 km to Badi Chaupar.
• Once operational, Bangalore’s 30.3 km long metro network will overtake Kolkata’s 28.14 km metro line to become the 2nd longest in India after the Delhi Metro’s mammoth 213 km network.
Who’s excited? I know I am!
For more updates, check out the Bangalore section of The Metro Rail Guy!
– TMRG
This is really great news! So City Railway metro station will remain a misnomer for months to come. I noticed the station is also a little far off with no dedicated walkway to the skywalk. This can only happen in India.
D day has come .. Finally …
By d way
Thank you
Themetrorailguy.com
For constantly updating
Yes..It has…still keeping fingers crossed…:)…
Thanks so much for keeping all of us updated all through…
Satellite bus stand (one of bus stands in Bangalore) is not connected to nearest metro station Deepajalinagar from any side
R there any plans for this
( iF it gets connected it will hardly take 15 min , now it is taking 30to 45 Min by bus)
I haven’t come across any plans for a dedicated link.
Phase 1 was poor planning in terms of integrating the metro with other transport services. I believe BMRC has realised this and will take care for phase2.
Really great news.. After a long long time… But i would wait for the inauguration to happen and see the trains running for 2-3 days to indeed make sure that this happened 🙂
I just spilled my coffee! Most hilarious thing I’ve read this morning.
Hi there,
Just cant help noticing that most of your activity happens in the morning.
whats the story ?
I’ve become a morning person. Used to be quite different a couple years back.
Yes..It has…still keeping fingers crossed…:)…& Yes you aptly said it!!!
Thanks so much for keeping all of us updated all through…
So where do i get down if i want to catch a outstation train ? Majestic or City Railway Station?
There seems to be no pedestrian connectivity to the underground city railway metro’s station, you will have to connect at Majestic metro station
Great news. I had kept asking whether it would be an Ugaadhi gift. But it is almost an Ugaadhi gift, since the disance of inauguration date is not far off from that date.
‘May’ be it is a May Day Gift for all workers.
I am so happy.
S. Manikantan
Chennai
That’s a good way to put it!
Someone complained that delay of EW route was due to re-tendering for UG section and if you are expecting operations to start as soon as the TBMs were out? Sounds hilarious as I’m sure you are not. Thoughts on this?
1) That’s incorrect. Only UG-1 was re-tendered as the bids received for it were too high. In Nov 2010, BMRCL had to break the contract up into 2: (1) north-south tunneling and (2) Majestic station, which they awarded in March 2011 and November 2011 respectively.
Coming back to UG-2 (purple line tunnels), the contract was awarded in March 2010 and tunneling works ended in March 2014 which is a very reasonable time-frame for completing 10 breakthroughs with the TBMs they deployed. Besides the odd hard rock or maintenance pit-stop between each tunneling drive which is always expected, the TBMs here didn’t face any major geology issues, countless fragile buildings or undocumented bore-wells along its route. That is certainly not to downplay the role of the contractor – Hats off to the CEC-CICI team for their absolutely professional work in resolving all issues they faced of varying nature and degree, and for meticulously documenting them for years to come. My gripe is with the post-breakthrough delay. Taking 2 years to open this section since the final breakthrough is simply unacceptable in my books or even the standards set by the DMRC.
2) Nope, never did. I’ve documented 25+ breakthroughs since starting this initiative and have never suggested such a thing. However, I did expect them to be able to wrap up all internal works in a year’s timeframe or so, as it has previously & continues to be done in Delhi. FYI – DMRC just completed the last breakthrough for Violet line’s 9.37km extension in February and internally plans to open it by Independence Day as lots of works are going on in parallel. As I mentioned above, the track-work taking this long to complete was unacceptable. BMRCL’s newsletters do a good job in documenting this. See:
http://bmrc.co.in/pdf/news/Aug-2015.pdf
Alumino-Thermic Welding out of 100 numbers, 77 numbers is completed.
http://bmrc.co.in/pdf/news/Sept-2015.pdf
Alumino-Thermic Welding out of 110 numbers, 78 numbers are completed
Here’s a nice video on what Alumino-Thermic welding is:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=19jqMckL8bA
Isn’t it possible that they delayed the post-tunneling work on EW corridor as Majestic was nowhere near commissioning and they wanted to get Majestic in good-to-go condition asap. Hence the 2-year timeframe instead of 1-year for track-laying, etc. Just my two cents.
BTW, great efforts by you to maintain the website.
Hi, that’s a good thought, but multiple contractors worked together in parallel for completing different tasks, so shortage or diversion of resources to complete Majestic station would not have been a constraint or possible.
Thanks for your warm compliment!
Any news on the operating frequency of the trains?
thank you
Hi, not yet. It should be announced in the coming days.
Yes!!!!
Its good to see the UG line opening after all those delays. However I still don’t understand the rationale behind the route planning of metro. I fail to see any major IT hubs where most of the traffic movement happens being connected in a long time to come. Even in phase two there is not going to be a direct link between ecity and whitefield via ORR. As such the metro is not going to bring any relief to people who have to use the ORR to reach there workplaces. It doesn’t look like population demographics or traffic density was factored while creating the route plan for the metro. The metro should have first created a corridor to link the IT hubs and then as an offshoot would have connected the nearby areas and not the other way round.Its going to be a big disappointment in the years to come and would be a model example of how not to plan a MRTS. I would really like to believe otherwise if you can answer my queries @TMRG
Hi, Phase 1’s lines were planned in 2003-04 by a partnership of RITES-DMRC, and was based off of Delhi’s ‘model’ of first connecting historic commercial & transportation modes in the city center. The project’s construction only started in 2007 by when additional connectivity was required to the places you mentioned, but it would have been next to impossible to implement due to its cost. The BMRCL in 2008 was able to secure funding for a 9.3 km extension of the Green line from Yeshwanthapura to Hesaraghatta Cross and from RV Road to Puttenahalli, but nothing more.
After the delay in executing Phase 1, the route planning for Phase 2 to cover up for the lost time has been a big disappointment. This phase is like Delhi’s 2nd phase – all about extending the metro’s reach, but with a very small footprint of 72 kms versus 124 km in Delhi. And the way the BMRCL is going with the bidding process, these lines will not be operational until 2023 by when even more lines would be required. They are yet to invite construction bids for both the RV Road-Bommasandra and Gottigere-Nagawara lines and I don’t see work on either of them starting until mid 2017.
You’re spot on – this is not a model example of how to plan or execute a MRTS.