Bengaluru: While the opening east-west corridor on Namma Metro for commercial operations is drawing a good response, the last mile connectivity for the commuters continues to be patchy. On Tuesday too many commuters took the Metro for their office and colleges, between 8 am and 11 am, but they complained that the BMTC feeder services were not running in sync with train services.
The problem is acute at Byappanahalli station, as there is no place to park the buses. BMTC has been requesting BMRCL to dedicate some area for parking buses, but nothing has happened so far.
On Monday, techies heading to ITPL were asked to get down at SV Road metro station, instead of Byappanahalli, as this particular station had bus bays.
However, this station is located on the crowded Old Madras Road and faces traffic gridlocks during peak hours and even to reach Byappanahalli, which is 2 km away, it takes 15-20 minutes.
Roshan Nayak, a techie pointed out, “They should create infrastructure for BMTC at Byappanahalli. We could have reached Byappanhalli in 1-2 minutes by Metro and saved a lot of time.”
Narrating his inconvenience, Gautham Shetty, a commuter said that on Monday at Byappanahalli more than 500 Whitefield-bound people had to wait for a long duration. At last some regular ITPL bound buses arrived, but none of them were heading towards Graphite India side.
Another commuter questioned why Metro was providing area for a bike rental company, but denying land to BMTC. He also pointed out that there was enough area near Byappanahalli metro station for bus bays.
Narrating his plight, Rajeev Kumar, an IT professional said, “We somehow park our vehicle at Vijaynagar metro station and take the metro, but if we do not get seamless BMTC feeder buses at our destination, how will we make it to our respective offices on time. We understand these are early days, but if these issues are not addressed soon, the ridership will get affected in the long run.”
Voicing a similar opinion Sunil Kuppathil says, “BMTC should divert few Volvo 335E to this route and add more buses in order to encourage people to take metro. This should not be limited only to peak hours, but made available throughout the day.”
A BMTC official said they are ready to add more buses, depending on the demand, and still hoping to get some space for bus parking at Byappanahalli.
