Suburban Rail System--To the Rescue of Urban Infrastructure Crisis Faced by the Metropolitan Cities in Emerging Economies

This paper attempts to describe the benefits of using existing railway infrastructure around growing metropolitan cities for addressing urban mobility challenges. Suburban rail services can greatly help alleviate commuting options and meet rising demands for reliable mass transit services into and out from city centers to suburbs and satellite towns. Construction costs would be optimum and construction periods small in comparison with new systems. Increasing capacities with more frequent trains can be done sustainably and without causing disruption to other city facilities and infrastructure unlike road augmentation or building new routes for exclusive track guided rail systems. A proposal for implementing suburban rail services in the city of Bangalore, India (population 9.5 million) has been used as a case study. The socioeconomic benefits that can be derived from such a system include the obviously easier access to city centers by suburbanites, minimizing city road decay due to overloads, address problems of people who are poor (not just in terms of income but also in terms of social exclusion associated with inaccessibility to jobs, schools, health facilities, and social activities that are usually superior within the city) besides adding to the quality and quantity of public transport. It would also help shift many economic development activities away from the city and concentrate new development in nearby satellite towns.