On August 10, 2025, Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated Yellow line of Bengaluru metro rail. Constructed at a revised cost of Rs 7,610 crore, the 19.15-km fully elevated corridor with 16 stations connecting RV Road to Bommasandra industrial hub is expected to usher in a new era of fast, safe, secured and comfortable connectivity to city’s IT corridors and Bommasandra industrial hub, apart from reducing congestion on Hosur Road and Outer Ring Road.

Next only to Delhi

The 19.15-km (16 stations) Yellow line, along with 33.46-km (26 stations) Green Line and 43.49 km (37 stations) Purple line takes the operational network of Namma Metro to 96 kilometers and 85 metro stations (76 elevated, eight underground and one at-grade).

With the above, Bengaluru metro has now extended its lead over metro rail systems in other Indian metropolises – Hyderabad (69km), Mumbai (68.9km), Kolkata (59.38 km) and Chennai (54.1km) and now stands next only to Delhi which is way ahead with 395 km operational route kilometre and 289 stations.

1,055 km and counting

Also, with the opening of the Yellow line, the saga of the operational metro rail network crossed another milestone. From one 14.6-km line in Kolkata in 2000 and 214-km in five cities in 2014 (Delhi accounting for 188 of 214 km), Bharat has fast-tracked operationalisation of metro rail network to 1,055 km in 24 cities by 2025. This addition of 800 km operational network in past 11 years, adding 72.72km route kilometre per annum, has no parallel in the world outside China.

China is an altogether different paradigm about which I will talk later.

In the Fast Lane

Apart from constructing metro rail at a speed next only to China, Bharat has entered fast lane in one more special aspect- UTO (unattended train operations) technologically referred to as Grade of Automation 4 (GoA4), also known as fully automatic driverless operation. Although it will be initially operated with loco pilot to increase confidence of commuters, Yellow line becomes the first metro line in India outside Delhi to be equipped with fully automatic driverless (GoA4).

Also, Delhi Metro Magenta Line (38 km), Pink line (59 km) and Namma Metro Yellow Line (19.5 km) take the operational length of GoA4 fully automatic metro rail in India next only to China, Saudi Arabia and Singapore. And, with more such systems under fast-track construction in Delhi, Bengaluru and Chennai, sooner Bharat will have 409.1 km way ahead of other countries, but still far behind China.

Good and not so good

While inauguration of the Yellow line is the good news, it comes with its share of at least three, bad news:

1. Political Slugfest: Bengaluru Metro is a joint venture of the State Government and Government of India. As such it was rightly inaugurated by Prime Minister with Karnataka Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister in attendance. This being the case, the political slugfest between the state level leaders of parties ruling at the state and centre was not only bad politicking, but was also bad optics.

2. Metro rail with 25-minute headway is no metro rail: Operations on the Yellow line will begin at 5 am on August 11, with trains running every 25 minutes because so far Bengaluru Metro has received only three train sets. Agreed, the supply of metro coaches is the longest lead item of metro project, but the turnkey contract for 216 metro coaches Phase II of Bengaluru Metro, including 90 coaches for Yellow line, was awarded way back in February 2020 to Chinese company CRRC Nanjing Puzhen Co Ltd with the make in India provision Also agreed there was unexpected Covid-19 disruption and Galwan stand off , nonetheless time available was sufficient for all train sets to be deployed on Yellow Line to be in place before inauguration. But all BMRCL has is three trainsets........

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