A file photo shows the ongoing Metro construction work at Vellara junction

BENGALURU: The Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) has quietly changed the colour of its upcoming Gottigere-Nagawara line from red to pink.

While the RV Road-Bommasandra line that connects Electronics City will be yellow, BMRCL decided that the Silk Board-KR Puram- Kempegowda International Airport corridor that connects Outer Ring Road (ORR) and Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) will be light blue.

Currently, the Metro network consists of two colour-coded lines: Purple (Byappanahalli-Mysuru Road) and Green (Nagasandra-Yelachenahalli). Once work on Phase 2 is completed, Purple Line will run from Challaghatta to Whitefield; Green Line will be from Anjanapura to Bangalore International Exhibition Centre (BIEC). These are extensions to these lines, so the existing colours will continue.

Colour coding the corridors will help passengers identify Metro sections easily and change lines without difficulty. Some Metros in foreign cities have opted for alphabets and numbers after having run out of colours.

“The colour of Gottigere-Nagawara line has been changed to pink to avoid red. In the mobility sector, red indicates ‘stop’,” BMRCL managing director Ajay Seth explained. “In the colour scheme, light blue was chosen for the ORR-airport corridor to indicate the sky which is associated with air travel,” he added. For the ORR-West (Hebbal to JP Nagar) in Phase 3, orange was chosen to contrast with light blue of ORR-Airport line.

Corridors may be named after places, organisations

“Besides colour, we are thinking of associating each line with an important place or organisation on that line instead of calling each by direction (East-West or North-South) or origin-destination (RV Road to Bommasandra) or by a number (Line 5 or Reach 5). Also, we may call them Metro instead of line. For example, Challaghatta-Whitefield corridor will be named Whitefield Metro; RV Road-Bommasandra as Electronics City Metro; Gottigere-Nagawara as IIMB Metro; Silk Board-KR Puram-Kempegowda International Airport as ORR-Airport Metro and Hebbal to JP Nagar line as ORR-West. We are looking for an appropriate name for the North-South Line,” Seth said.

P urple is tech, green environment

Usually, Metro corporations use primary colours like red, blue and yellow first and then go for secondary colours. Asked what the colours represent, an official said: “Purple is technology and green indicates environment, but meanings of the colours of other corridors haven’t been finalised.” BMTC, too, changed the colour of its non-AC buses from red to a combination of blue and white. The decision was taken reportedly after its buses were involved in a series of accidents and earned the tag ‘killer buses’. The Gottigere-Nagawara Metro corridor had also ran into several controversies and land-acquisition issues.

