Bengaluru: Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation (BMRC) Managing Director Anjum Parwez on Friday said the Bengaluru metro rail project is on track to complete 175 km of commute in the city by June 2025. Addressing a session on the Future of Mobility at the Bengaluru Tech Summit 2022 (BTS 2022) on Friday, Parwez said as part of the second and third phase of the project, Bengaluru will have 314 km of metro rail connectivity by 2041.
He said construction of metro lines was progressing well on the airport side. Parwez also said that the biggest challenge in urban mobility is the integration of multi-modal transport systems and to move people to get into public transport from personalized transport modes.
Parwez said urban India was the most neglected area until the 1990s as urban planning was not in sync with connectivity or mobility issues. He said BMRCL was getting a lot of support from start-ups in mobility to ensure that commuters have last-mile connectivity. He also said the Corporation is tying up with mobility providers to get people to reach the nodal point and commute to their workplaces.
Parwez said the Namma Metro had recently gone digital with its payment options that include the use of QR code scans and unified payments interface (UPI)-based payment options which have met with a good response from commuters. He said there was no waiting time for passengers who are in a hurry as there is no need to stand in queues to buy tickets or cards now.
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BMRCL was working on a transit-oriented development where the commuters live close to the stations and to the workplace. Besides, BMRCL also intends to integrate all aggregators by bringing out a mobility card for commuters. The corporation was in talks with Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) to have bus stops at metro stations to help commuters hop on and hop off both modes of transport, he said.
He said bike taxis and car-pooling should be encouraged although the government of Karnataka had put brakes on their operations. The BMRCL is also working on introducing shopping options for commuters inside and outside the metro stations. He said the BMRCL plans to sell office space in metro stations and provide end-to-end solutions to all stakeholders.
Managing Director of the International Council on Clean Transportation (ICCT) Amit Bhatt said urbanization in India is 33 percent while it is 80-85 per cent in European and American countries. He said about 66 per cent of urban infrastructure is yet to be built in India as the country is set to see a number of cities being built. The biggest challenge is to ensure zero emission, zero exclusion and zero accidents in urban transport.
Vadiraj Krishnamurthy, Vice-President Technology and Innovation, Bosch Global Software Technologies, said the future was software-defined fully programmable vehicles. The key enablers of urban transport are personalized multi-modal mobility, automated mobility, electrified and connected mobility. "Connecting vehicles using technology is an engineering challenge of the future," he said.
