Elusive subway: People crawl under trains, jump tracks

BENGALURU: At Rajanukunte railway station, north Bengaluru, hundreds of passengers lunge under parked trains or run across the tracks to change platforms, while residents of half-a-dozen nearby villages do the same to go to the other side. The reason: South Western Railway’s proposal to build a pedestrian subway at the station remains on paper.
A road overbridge and pedestrian subway were proposed to be constructed at the station after a level-crossing gate at Rajanukunte was closed last year.
However, only the road overbridge on Yelahanka-Doddaballapur section has been built.
Replying to an RTI query in June 2018, SWR said the ‘general arrangement drawing’ of the pedestrian subway has already been prepared. “Access to Yelahanka was cut off for residents of about half-a-dozen villages when the level-crossing gate was shut.
At that time, SWR had promised to build a road overbridge as well as a pedestrian subway in place of the level crossing. But only the overbridge has been constructed.
At present, a defunct train is parked on the tracks and people are literally crawling underneath it to get to the other side,” said resident Muniraj.
SWR blames govt for delay
SWR officials said work on the pedestrian subway hasn’t progressed since “the state government is yet to hand over land to the railways for construction of the structure”. “Both the road overbridge and pedestrian subway were supposed to be constructed at the same time. However, the government is yet to give us land to build the subway,” an SWR official who did not wish to be named said.