Karnataka Chief Secretary Kaushik Mukherjee on Thursday told a group of industrialists that the state government has been in discussions with Railways Ministry under D V Sadananda Gowda to introduce more non-stop train services between Bangalore and Mysore, and the Centre is looking at the proposal closely. "We expect to have a decision on this pretty soon and an additional train may ply from March 2015," Mukherjee told the gathering.
Presently, there is one train -- the Mysore-Bangalore-Chennai Shatabdi which plies non-stop between Mysore and Bangalore, and this takes around two hours to cover the distance of around 140 kms. "We are also parallely trying to reduce the commuting time on the new train and if we can cut the duration, Mysore can well be a suburb of Bangalore and more companies and people can move out of Bangalore," Mukherjee explained.
As of now there are around nine trains plying between Bangalore and Mysore, and on an average the journey takes around three hours. However, the implementation of an additional non-stop train between Bangalore and Mysore will be dependent on the much-delayed work on doubling of track which has been in the works for the past nearly seven years. Gowda had recently said that they expected to complete this project by March 2015.
The 140-km track doubling project which was taken up in 2007 is complete partially totaling about 91 kms. It is facing hurdle chiefly over the shifting of a magazine, a monument of the 18th century meant for storing of gun-powder at Srirangapatna, besides land and funds.
Gowda had told that all hurdles had been cleared and the work would be speeded up. Improving of rail traffic between the two cities would reduce the pressure on the road connecting Bangalore-Mysore. He had admitted that the journey time of the trains between the two cities was a little longer and all efforts would be made to reduce the same.
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