Escalators will finally make their presence felt in the City railway station and Yeshwantpur station by mid April as the Bangalore division of Railways has finally received the escalator sets, that were allocated in the 2009 railway budget.
Civil engineering works have already begun and commissioning of three escalators at the City railway station is expected to be completed by April 15. The work on the lone escalator at Yeshwantpur station is likely to be completed by June 15. The cost of each escalator unit is Rs 36 lakh. The work being undertaken at the station is not expected to hamper the smooth flow of traffic on the platforms as no structures are being dismantled.
Ironically, these four escalators for the City division were allocated in the July 2009 railway budget, when it was announced by Mamata Bannerjee that escalators were being installed across the country in a phased manner. However, the Railway Board never went ahead with it and tenders were invited only in December 2012.
Karnataka was sanctioned four escalators and three of them will be installed at the City railway station on Platform 1 next to the stairs and one on Platform 5. The third set was to be installed next to the subway connecting Platform 1 and 2. But railway officials are now rethinking on this.
Bangalore Divisional Railway Manager Anil K Agarwal, said they had originally planned to install them like in Chennai and Delhi, where it only goes up. “We had decided not to install a set for people to come down. But now we are doing a rethink and intend to install a unit to come down on Platform 1,” he said. A survey is being conducted and officials are supposed to decide on the course of action in the next couple of days.
Since the stairs connecting Platform 1 will not be dismantled to make way for the escalators, the officials are facing a problem regarding the width available on the platform to have two sets of escalators. “We might face a problem as we need to have a gap of 5.6 meters away from the centre of the track free of any construction. If it is not possible, we will drop the idea of having an escalator at the subway,” Agarwal explained.
Bangaloreans, however, will have to wait from quite some time before more escalators are installed. Though Union Minister for Railways, Pawan Kumar Bansal, announced 179 new escalators none of them are likely to come to Bangalore. The officials stated that they had not asked for more escalators and neither had the Board asked for estimates for escalators unlike the previous times.