Bengaluru’s first airport-like railway station will see trains chug from tonight

BENGLAURU : More than a year after it was completed and ready for inauguration, Bengaluru’s first airport-like train station with centralised air-conditioning will commence operations from Monday night.
The Rs 314-crore Sir M Visvesvaraya Terminal at Byappanahalli will start operations without much fanfare with a formal inauguration by Prime Minister Narendra Modi expected later.To begin with, the south western railway (SWR) has shifted three pairs of long-distance trains from Banaswadi station to Sir MV terminal.

The Banaswadi-Ernakulam tri-weekly Express (no. 12684) will be the first to run from the terminal, which was initially scheduled to be India’s first modernised railway terminal, at 7pm Monday.
Now, the city terminal will be the third such station given that the other two — in Habibganj (Rani Kamlapati), Madhya Pradesh and Gandhinagar, Gujarat — were inaugurated before the Sir MV Terminal although they were completed later. The work on the terminal was supposed to be completed in December 2018, but it missed several deadlines. Though it was ready in March 2021, a formal inauguration was delayed as they didn’t get the date from the Prime Minister’s office.

“This is the first greenfield project where Indian railways constructed a world-class terminal. Other two stations (Habibganj and Gandhinagar) where the existing ones were re-developed by the IRSDC,” E Vijaya, SWR chief PRO (in-charge), said.
In Bengaluru, this will be the third railway coaching terminal (where trains originate/terminate their trips) after KSR Bengaluru City and Yeshwantpur stations. While KSR, which is part of the Mysuru line, has been operational since 1882, Yeshwantpur station on the Doddaballapur line was built in 1892.
Vijaya said the Bengaluru railway division of SWR came into existence only in 1981. “The railway track was predominantly a meter gauge and narrow gauge during that time but now the entire Bengaluru division has only broadgauge route,” she said.
She added that there was, in fact, no demand for trains from Bengaluru till late 1990s as most were limited to southern states. “KSR Bengaluru and Yeshwantpur were small stations. Post the IT boom in 2000s, there has been huge demand for more trains especially to the north but tracks/ stations in Bengaluru reached almost a saturation point. This has resulted in the need for more terminals to run additional trains,” she said.
The façade of the terminal is designed on the lines of Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) and can cater to a daily footfall of 50,000.
30 pairs of trains
SWR sources said they are likely to shift around 30 pairs of longdistance trains to Sir MV terminal in phases. “The railway board has already approved shifting of 28 pairs of long-distance trains to the new terminal but this will be done in phases,” one of them said. Officials said the trains from stations like Banaswadi, Cantonment and KR Puram to places like Kerala, West Bengal, Assam and Tripura will be shifted in the first phase. Following this, some trains from Yeshwantpur and KSR Bengaluru City railway stations will be shifted there.
In addition to the existing trains, railways will also operate long-distance trains from the new terminal. Earlier, railways had planned to allow private firms to operate long-distance trains from here. The identified routes to and from the terminal were: Okhla, Patliputra, Gorakhpur, Allahabad, Tambaram, Shalimar, Hatia, Jaipur and Guwahati.
The move to shift several long-distance trains from two existing rail terminals to Sir MV terminal is expected to improve the punctuality of services as well as decongest the rail section. This will also help railways to operate more long-distance trains from Bengaluru.