नहीं कोई गम, रेलवे से हैं हम - Aman

1. Kodagu district is part of Western Ghats, which is one of UNESCO-designated biodiversity hotspots. About 325 endangered species are concentrated around Western ghats, which are the last habitats for many of these. Now look at the proposed alignment with satellite image (I have attached the image), you can see that it directly cuts through these virgin forests. Now imagine the impact of railway line through this forest, the amount of disturbances it can create. Adding to the point discussed above, this is one of the projects which is destroying the ecology of this region, others being electric transmission line between Kozhikode and Mysuru, planned road-widening of NH-275, apart from multiple illegal resorts that has come up within the limits of reserved forests (for this, it is the fault of state govt. they are doing nothing to tackle this, which rises the suspicion if these resort owners have bought the Karnataka...
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forests minister Ramnath Rai). Similar illegal resorts have also come up at Anshi-Dandeli tiger reserve, which coincidentally is near to UBL-VSG line.
2. Many of people from Kodagu have been strongly opposing this project. Guess which group among these people have strongest opposition? It's military veterans.
3. As for rainfall, let's look at rainfall statistics for Kodagu district from 2004-2010. It shows steady decline from 243cm in 2004, (after which it raised to 304cm in 2005) to 231cm in 2010. This decreasing rainfall means Kaveri river is not getting enough rainfall, which is further aggravating the water crisis between Karnataka and Tamilnadu (2016), and making drought situation in K'taka and T'nadu worse.
link for rainfall data: click here
4. How this line, once completed will be profitable is beyond my understanding. Already another line runs connects interior Karnataka with western coast, which is HAS-MAJN line. For me, doubling and electrification of HAS-MAJN section makes more sound economic sense than constructing a parallel new line, for which land needs to be acquired again, which means more delays. Agree, as per current HMRDC agreement, there is a limit on railway traffic on this line, but the company itself is planning to augment capacity, which means more trains will be run anyways.
5. I have the same point for UBL-Ankola new line. Why construct a new line through sensitive ecological area, when a line parallel to this is already getting doubled and electrified?
These are the reasons why Kodagu people are against this project.

Very well explained sir!
Just to add to your reply, had there been no highway or good road connections already present here, then a parallel railway would have made sense. The roads cause untold human-animal conflict in this region. Growing up, I have seen how the Nagarhole, Bandipur and Madumalai forests have changed over the years as road traffic increased. 2 decades ago, one could run across tigers, elephants and all sorts of wildlife in broad daylight. Now, thanks to enormous traffic through these roads, wildlife movement has been terribly affected.
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At this point, the road traffic has reached a point where it will not decrease even if a railway line is opened. A railway line, that could have been a solution once, will now become an additional problem. It's good to see that people have recognized the possible destruction due to the expansion of the highway, and are opposing that!

With respect to animals, I acknowledge the fact that both roads and rail lines are harmful with respect to the fauna of a region.
This is a big problem in the NJP SGUJ NMZ HSA APDJ section where trains run down herds of elephants almost on a regular basis.
Doubling of the HAS MAJN line has its own constraints, and it will take a long time to build a second line in that area
Well...
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IR doesn't always work on the basis of earning profits, had it been the case, railways would have never gone beyond Dibrugarh in NE India. TLY MYS route may provide an alternate route to trains from Mangalore/CAN/CLT to Bangalore/Mysore etc. Can you please provide me the source of rainfall stats?