16 km stretch from Whitefield to Byappanahalli to be ready in March

Bengaluru: Karnataka Governor Thawarchand Gehlot said in a joint address to the state legislature that the eagerly anticipated 16-kilometer Purple Line segment of the Bengaluru Metro from Baiyappanahalli to Whitefield will be opened in March 2023. "Metro project work on the 15.81-km Baiyappanahalli to Whitefield stretch would be commissioned by March 2023," the governor said in a speech on Friday. "Metro project work on the 13.65-km Mysuru Road to Kengeri (7.53 km) and Yelachenahalli to Silk Institute (6.12 km) segments have been completed.

R1A, an 8.67-km stretch from Baiyappanahalli to Seetharama Palya, and R1B, a 7.14-km stretch from SeetharamaPalya to Whitefield, make up the 15.81-km-long Baiyapanahalli-Whitefield stretch.

About 3 lakh passengers are anticipated to benefit from the service. It would be a big relief for the thousands of commuters who must endure daily delays of more than two hours in order to travel from the city to Whitefield or vice versa.

Benniganahalli, KR Puram, Mahadevapura, Garudacharpalya, Hoodi Junction, SeetharamaPalya, Kundalahalli, Nallurhalli, Sri Sathya Sai Hospital, PattandurAgrahara (ITPL), Kadugodi, and Channasandra will all be stops on the Purple Line (Baiyappanahalli-Whitefield). The total trip is expected to take about 72 minutes after the work is finished. The Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) requested the metro rail safety commissioner to check up the construction between KR Puram and Whitefield last month.

"We're going to start testing when the commissioner completes the inspection work on February 16 and submits the report in four to five days. The stretch should be operational by March of this year," according to BMRCL MD AnjumParvez.

The metro rail corporation, on the other hand, faces a problem with a railway crossing close to the Baiyappanahalli depot, which could cause the launch of this segment to be postponed beyond March.

Commuters would have to rely on feeder bus services to travel between Baiyappanahalli and KR Puram in the interim as the KR Puram-Whitefield section is expected to open first in March and the Baiyapanahalli-KR Puram link is scheduled to open only in June. Following the collapse of an under-construction Metro pillar on January 10 on a new stretch at Nagavara in East Bengaluru, the BMRCL recently experienced a setback in its building activities. The pillar fall claimed the lives of a young mother and her two-year-old child who were riding pillion on a motorcycle, but her husband survived.