Bengaluru Suburban Rail

The Rail Infrastructure Development Company (Karnataka) Ltd, known as K-Ride, has put out a tender for a European Train Control System at Level-2 standard, to be used on two stretches of the Bengaluru Suburban Rail network.

The tender, floated on a Saturday, was announced through Bi-Ride, a K-Ride subsidiary, and is pegged at ₹1,017 crore, a figure that does not include GST or import duty on equipment.

The signalling work covers Corridor 2, called the Mallige Line, which stretches roughly 25 km from Byappanahalli Terminal to Chikkabanavara, and Corridor 4, the Kanaka Line, running about 46 km between Heelalige and Rajanukunte.

Once a contractor is picked, K-Ride wants the Mallige Line signalling finished in 21 months, while the longer Kanaka Line is allotted 30 months for completion.

This marks a change of plan: K-Ride had earlier intended to use communications-based train control, the same technology running on Bengaluru Metro's Pink and Blue Lines, but switched to ETCS after getting approval in August to apply it across all corridors of the suburban project.

A functioning signalling system sits at the core of how the suburban network will track and manage train movements, making this contract one of the project's most consequential technical pieces.

K-Ride officials have linked the new system to wider goals for the project, including safer operations and easing the city's traffic load, though the tender itself deals only with signalling hardware and its rollout.

The same ETCS technology is also being planned for India's Mumbai-Ahmedabad bullet train corridor, putting Bengaluru's suburban rail in the company of the country's flagship high-speed rail effort when it comes to train control systems.

Separately, the Integral Coach Factory in Chennai has been tasked with building 51 trains for the network, each made up of three stainless-steel coaches that can carry 350 passengers and run up to 80 kmph.

Four of these trainsets are expected to arrive by the 2027-28 financial year, with deliveries continuing through 2028-29.

On the signalling front, the immediate next step is choosing a winning bidder, after which the clock starts on the 21-month and 30-month build timelines for the two corridors.