2019: A Pivotal Footbridge is Added to a Railway Station in India

February 18, 2019

An infrastructure milestone took place for City Railway Station in the city of Bengaluru (also called Bangalore), which is the capital of the state of Karnataka in southern India. This underground station on the East-West corridor of Namma Metro rapid transit system’s Purple Line had been opened on April 30, 2016. Nearly three years later, the milestone for City Railway Station — officially known today as Krantivira Sangolli Rayanna Railway Station — involved inaugurating a footbridge for public use.

This footbridge was built to connect the station with platform 10 of Bengaluru City Railway Station, the city’s main railway station and also one of the busiest stations within the entire Indian Railways network. Just a little over two months after the start of service for the footbridge, what had already become this new structure’s considerable benefits for City Railway Station were highlighted by reporter Chranjeevi Kulkarni in the Karnataka-based Deccan Herald.

“The metro station has had a daily ridership of just about 4,500 until February,” noted Kulkarni.  “Passengers had a hard time walking 300 meters [984.3 feet] from the metro station to the railway station. Women passengers were complaining that the dimly lit broken road was a nightmare during late hours.” Kulkarni then stated, “On February 18, a foot overbridge between the two stations opened after much delay, to the relief of the passengers.”

This article cited City Railway Station’s latest statistics at the time that were provided by A.S. Shankar, executive director for operations and management at Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation. (This agency, as a joint venture of the national government of India and the state government of Karnataka, is responsible for the oversight and operations of Namma Metro.) Shankar confirmed that, in the couple of months since the footbridge was introduced, the monthly number of passengers at City Railway Station had increased by 25,000.  “The bridge has had a positive impact on ridership,” he asserted. (The accompanying photo of this structure was taken on New Year’s Eve in 2025.)

Photo Credit: Shyamal (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Shyamal) — licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported license at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/deed.en

For more information on transportation in Karnataka, please check out https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transport_in_Karnataka