Karnataka - Bangalore

In the right direction but yet to gain momentum

— Photo: K.Murali Kumar

Buzzing with activity: About one lakh passengers start their journey from the Bangalore City railway station, which boasts of a number of facilities.

BANGALORE: Paul Theroux, novelist and travel writer, enchanted millions of his readers with his engaging description of train travel across continents. The Great Railway Bazaar gave a new definition to travel writing where the Indian Railways played no mean role. Indeed train travel is an important facet of our lives too till we get too old or too posh.

The first step in train travel is the railway station. So what does the Bangalorean face prior to a rail journey?

With nearly 1.5 lakh passengers boarding trains everyday in four major railway stations in Bangalore — City, Yeshwanthpur, Cantonment and Krishnarajapuram — and the passenger traffic growing at nine per cent a year, the facilities regularly upgraded in these stations are becoming inadequate as the days pass by. During 2006-07, these stations had handled nearly five crore originating passengers.

Majority of the amenities being provided are concentrated at the City Railway Station where nearly one lakh passengers start their journey daily. The station, handling 71 pairs of trains a day, boasting a number of facilities, including platform ticket vending machines, touch screen kiosks for train information and the like, still has a long way to go to match the global image of Bangalore.

With the City station bursting at the seams, both in terms of train and passenger traffic, the South Western Railway (SWR) a few years ago began developing Yeshwanthpur as the second terminal for Bangalore. Within no time, the capacity of this station too reached saturation point (25 pairs of trains a day). Scouting for another terminal, the SWR has zeroed in on Byappanahalli and is all set to develop it as the third major terminal for Bangalore.

At the City station, a number of new facilities were provided and existing ones were upgraded. Existing passenger concourse, circulating area, platforms, booking office, waiting halls, platform shelters, pay-and-use toilets and foot overbridges have been improved. New facilities, namely customer facilitation centre, security surveillance system, air conditioned waiting lounge on both the entries, a new concourse at the main entry and battery-operated ferry for physically challenged were recently provided.

Renovation work and provision of new facilities at Yeshwanthpur Station is just complete and it was declared a model station by Railway Minister Lalu Prasad on Monday. However, barring the platforms at both the entries, four other platforms lack shelter and drinking water facility and the officials claim that the facilities will be in shortly. On capacity expansion of this station, they point out at encroachment of railway land, both on Tumkur Road side and Yeshwanthpur Market side. Political interference is blocking railway’s way to clear the encroachments.

The Cantonment station, which is neither an originating nor a terminating point, handles nearly 30 pairs of trains bound towards Chennai and Kerala. The existing two platforms lack many facilities while construction of two additional platforms to handle new trains is still under way. The autorickshaw mafia is said to be thriving at this station despite there being a pre-paid autorickshaw counter.

Though the SWR inaugurated a new building (adjacent to Old Madras Road) for ticket reservation at Krishnarajapuram, network based passenger reservation system (PRS) for advance booking of tickets is not available at this station. Passengers in and around Krishnarajapuram either have to go to Whitefield or Indiranagar to book their tickets. With outbound and inbound trains halting at Platform Nos. 2 and 3, passengers are compelled to take the foot overbridge.

© Copyright 2000 - 2009 The Hindu