The Times NIE News Makers Meet

“Bangalore Metro, the most expensive project undertaken by the state and one of the most awaited ones, should be ready by December this year,” informed Vasanth Rao, the General Manager for BMRCL in a recent NIE Newsmakers meet held by Times of India, last week.

Attended by select students from across 40 schools of Bangalore, the idea for all the students representing their school was to put ourselves in the shoes of a reporter , attend a press conference organised by Times of India, quiz the official further with query that came to our mind after gathering information.

The topic for the day was ‘Namma metro and city’. Tejas Rao and I gathered a lot of interesting facts about the project and also understood that it is a Herculean task. There are many teams working parallel on national and international level to make the first metro train run in Bangalore.

Moderated by The Times of India -Resident Editor Balram Singh, the press conference gave many students a chance to ask the one question on the topic which was on to of their mind.After the press conference we had we had a presentation on nuances of journalism is and a star correspondent Quiz.

It was great exposure and the press conference was great. And i sure hope Inventure kids continues going through such interesting gatherings.

Interesting facts about Namma Metro:

-Bangalore Metro was the first modern metro rail project to be sanctioned by the government. But Delhi got going with it faster and hence became the first city to have it running.

-The metro route will be 42.8 kms long.

-Each metro train will have three coaches each, run every three minutes and transport 3,000 people at one go. (Com pare it with our BMTC buses transports 70 people in one go)

- Six to eight metro engines will be kept as spare to combat an emergency.

- The train would be fully automatic but would have a driver to guide in case of emergency

-Over 1500 trees have been cut to make space for the metro rails. Over 5000 also planted in the outskirts to compensate for the reduced green cover.

- Metro rail has generated 4000 direct employments and 10,000 direct employments.

By Manasi Rao
Grade 8B