President Pranab Mukherjee flags off 11.3 km stretch Bengaluru Metro Green Line

Bengaluru: To the cheers of hundreds – some of whom jumped on for a joyride - the spanking new Bangalore Metro coaches zoomed out of the swank Sampige Road Mantri Square station on Saturday, arriving at Yelachenahalli metro station stop a mere 25 minutes later.

A route that would normally have taken an hour by road! It was off! The first phase - the 11.3 km stretch 'Metro Green Line’ - of the Bangalore Metro was commissioned on Saturday at exactly 6.20 pm by President Pranab Mukherjee, some eleven years after then PM Manmohan Singh laid the foundation stone for the Namma Metro project,

Mr. Mukherjee congratulated the Centre and the states for implementing Metro projects to meet the needs of the growing population while acknowledging the metro was late "by several decades", promising that “in the next 10-15 years, more than a dozen Indian cities will have a metro."

Namma Metro is 4 km underground and 7.3 km elevated, and consists of 10 metro stations and will provide connectivity between North and South Bengaluru.

With the commissioning on Saturday of 11.3 km stretch, Bangalore Metro Rail Project has a track length of 42.3 km with 40 stations in two corridors, namely East-West and North-South Corridor for Phase-I.

The city’s Majestic or Nada Prabhu Kempegowda Station, which is the interchange, is said to be Asia’s biggest station of its kind.