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Bengaluru’s Namma Metro has completed 14 years of operations, yet its advancement remains painfully slow. Since its inception, the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) has managed to implicit lone 96 km of its network, averaging a humble 7 km (6.86 km per year).
Despite its important relation successful easing the city’s notorious postulation congestion, the task has been mired successful delays, missed deadlines, and administrative inefficiencies that proceed to origin inconvenience to lakhs of commuters.
October 20 marks 12 years since the opening of Namma Metro’s archetypal operational stretch, Reach 1, connecting M.G. Road to Baiyyappanahalli connected October 20, 2011. The motorboat was a historical milestone, signalling the opening of South India’s archetypal metro strategy and the city’s introduction into the wide accelerated transit era. Over time, the web grew to go India’s second-largest metro, spanning 96.1 km down lone the Delhi Metro.
However, this maturation has travel astatine a snail’s pace. What was envisioned arsenic a transformative task has alternatively go synonymous with delays. Bengaluru’s archetypal underground metro line, inaugurated successful 2016, besides took years longer than planned. The prolonged operation and changeless roadworthy diversions person near citizens grappling with regular postulation chaos.
For instance, the Yellow Line, which connects R.V. Road to Bommasandra, exemplifies the persistent delays that characterise BMRCL’s operations. Initially scheduled to unfastened successful December 2022, the enactment missed aggregate deadlines, archetypal pushed to June 2023, past April 2024. Although civilian works concluded successful March 2024, delays successful receiving rolling banal forced BMRCL to postpone the opening further to December 2024. It was yet inaugurated successful August 2025, astir 3 years late.
Administrative delays
“A large information of Namma Metro’s delays are administrative alternatively than technical,” said railway activistic K.N. Krishna Prasad. “Both the Centre and the State, who jointly negociate BMRCL, person failed to coordinate effectively. The deficiency of enactment stableness and inadequate method expertise among apical officials person lone worsened the problem.”
He pointed retired that for agelong periods, BMRCL operated without a full-time Managing Director, and those who occupied the presumption often lacked the method inheritance to pb specified a analyzable infrastructure project. “Given Bengaluru’s exploding colonisation and transport needs, the metro should person been prioritised. Instead, mediocre coordination and enactment gaps person slowed progress,” helium added.
‘Misplaced priorities’
Transport adept M.N. Srihari called for a displacement successful authorities priorities. “Instead of focusing connected semipermanent metro expansion, authorities often crook to quick-fix projects similar flyovers and present passageway roads. These connection short-term alleviation but don’t code the basal origin of congestion. Metro enlargement should beryllium treated arsenic a city-shaping investment, not arsenic 1 among galore infrastructure projects,” helium said.
Mr. Srihari pointed retired that the BMRCL’s imaginable remains mostly untapped owed to mediocre readying and a deficiency of method direction. “Land acquisition hurdles, predominant plan changes, and mediocre coordination among agencies proceed to dilatory the project. What Bengaluru needs is simply a seamless, high-capacity metro web to tackle its postulation and contamination problems,” helium added.
BMRCL officials, meanwhile, person attributed the delays to factors beyond their contiguous control. “Land acquisition issues person been 1 of our biggest challenges. Acquiring spot from backstage owners, the Forest Department, and different authorities bodies takes time. Additionally, nationalist involvement litigations (PILs) and biology clearance delays further complicate timelines,” said a elder BMRCL official.
Costliest metro successful India
Officials cited the time-consuming process of obtaining permissions for histrion cutting, inferior shifting, and information inspections arsenic cardinal reasons for dilatory progress. “Inter-departmental coordination remains a bottleneck. Even tiny procedural delays tin clasp up full stretches of work,” the authoritative added.
Namma Metro is the astir costly metro web successful the state successful presumption of summons fares. In February, BMRCL revised fares, initially proposing a hike of implicit 110%. Following beardown nationalist backlash, the summation was capped astatine 71%. However, the deficiency of transparency surrounding the fare revision process drew disapproval from commuters and civic groups.
BMRCL came nether occurrence for withholding the Fare Fixation Committee (FFC) study for respective months earlier releasing it publicly.
