The Bengaluru Metro, better known as Namma Metro, is celebrating its seventh birthday today.
From being a proposal of the DMRC to get a high-speed transit line for Bengaluru in 2003 to helping cut down travel time and cost for many Bengalureans today, the Metro has come a long way.
Mired in delays, debates over feasibility and a very long battle with the rocky terrain of Bengaluru which obstructed constructed time and time again, the Metro today carries up to and even more than 3 lakh passengers a day across both Purple and Green Lines.
Even today, however, the Metro faces countless challenges, both from within and outside its operation. Earlier this year, the Metro staff went to strike over a spat with police officials. Later, some Kannada activists began an all-out brawl to remove 'Hindi imposition' from the stations, and have largely succeeded in their task and now, activists and BMRCL at loggerheads over shifting of the Cantonment station in the Gottgere-Nagawara line.
It has been a long road to reaching the current state that Namma Metro has achieved, becoming one of the main means of transport for lakhs of people of all ages, and the Phase 2 is expected to increase the ridership only more. The only thing remains to be seen if BMRCL can make the 2020 target for opening of operations across the lines by then.
