Bengaluru Sub-Urban Rail Project: A new era of Advance Transport System

Bengaluru Commuter Rail is an under construction suburban rail network for the city of Bangalore. A Commuter Rail system for the city was first proposed in 1983.

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Since then, several different route proposals were made but no Commuter Rail project took shape. It was finally approved in the 2019 Railway Budget. On 1 February 2020, finance minister, Nirmala Sitharaman mentioned in her budget that the project would be implemented at cost of Rs 18,600 crores.

The Finance Ministry stated that the central government would provide 20% of the equity and facilitate external assistance up to 60 percent of the project cost. It will be first of its kind and unique in India as it will have metro like facilities and rolling stock. It has slowest design speed among all the new commuter rail projects currently being implemented in India as Nagpur broad-gauge Metro and National Capital Region Transport Corporation are building rail tracks for design speed of 200 km/h with operating speed of 160 km/h. Commuter rail along with Hyperloop, High speed Airport Train, Intercity trains, Metro rail, Metro Neo, Metrolite will provide rail based public transport to the Bengaluru’ s general public.

Current operation by Indian Railways

Indian Railways south west railway zone operates several suburban train services from Bengaluru to Hosur, Jolarpettai, Tumakuru, Marikuppam, Bangarpet, Hindupur, Mysuru and Hassan. Hosur and Jolarpettai is across the border in Tamil Nadu and Hindupur is in Andhra Pradesh, while Tumakuru, Bangarpet, Mysuru and Hassan are in Karnataka.