BANGALORE (India) - IN southern India the much-awaited Bangalore international airport is almost ready, but getting there could prove a nightmare for travellers facing more chaos on clogged roads.

The US$630-million (S$890 million) facility is 95 per cent complete, and will open for flights as scheduled on March 30, Bangalore International Airport Ltd (BIAL) chief executive officer Albert Brunner said.

Mr Brunner has met his deadline to complete the airport, located 36 kilometres north of the choked city centre, in three years.

That feat alone is remarkable in a country where such large infrastructure projects routinely run into major delays.

But the government has not delivered on promises to widen access roads or build a dedicated rail link to and from the city - meaning the commute could take much longer than a short-haul flight.

The railway is still only a proposal on paper, while a four-kilometre road from the nearest highway to the airport is still to be completed. The airport itself has taken over construction of the link in a bid to open it on time.

'It's a pity the government didn't do anything about connectivity to the airport,' lamented Marcel Hungerbuehler, chief operations officer at BIAL, a consortium that includes Unique Zurich Airport, Siemens of Germany and Larsen and Toubro of India.

Creaky infrastructure
The Bangalore project well illustrates the problems India faces in fixing its creaky infrastructure to match an economy expanding at an annual rate of nine per cent.

Growing personal incomes have fuelled a surge in air traffic and car sales, straining aviation and road infrastructure in a country that needs to invest tens of billions of dollars in public works.

Domestic air traffic is forecast to double to 60 million passengers by 2010 from last year, while car sales are projected to reach two million units from 1.4 million in the same period.

'BIAL has done its job,' said Kapil Kaul, the India head of the Centre for Asia-Pacific Civil Aviation.

'The other stakeholders, mainly the state government, have almost totally ignored their responsibility of providing logistics. I find it shocking that an airport is ready, but there may be no way of getting there.'

From Electronic City in south Bangalore - the hub of India's information technology industry - it could take a four-hour drive to reach the airport when it opens.

Flying time to the nearby southern city of Chennai is just 40 minutes.

'It will be a nightmare driving to the airport,' said N. Reghuraj, the head of the local chapter of the Confederation of Indian Industry, who flies out of Bangalore's old airport twice a week.

'The passengers are not happy, the cargo guys are not happy.'

Traffic problem
India's traffic problem is particularly acute in Bangalore, and seemingly set to worsen. The city of six million people adds 1,000 vehicles to the roads a day and traffic crawls at an average speed of 13 kilometres an hour.

Bangalore also recorded growth of 38 per cent in air traffic in the year to August 2007, the highest for any Indian city.

The new airport is one of several from Hyderabad to Mumbai and Delhi where old terminals are bursting at the seams, and had to be redesigned to handle 11 million passengers a year over earlier estimates of five million.

Under an agreement between the government and BIAL, the existing airport in east Bangalore, a modest 10 kilometres from the city centre, will be closed to commercial traffic when the new facility is open.

But calls to keep the old airport open are becoming louder as airlines and passengers prepare for a painful transition.

'People don't want to spend four hours on the roads commuting from the south to the north of Bangalore,' said G.R. Gopinath, head of Deccan, India's biggest budget carrier.

'Multiple airports add competitive pressure for better pricing and better service quality - there shouldn't be a monopoly.'

Meanwhile, he plans to start a helicopter shuttle from the city to the new airport for passengers who can afford to cough up 4,000 rupees (S$141) for the ride. -- AFP