A few of us are meeting Mr Upendra Tripathy (BMTC) this Thursday. Unfortunately, we couldn't get to organize this as a broader and open-to-all-who-are-interested type of meeting. But, we will:

• Talk to him and explore ways of connecting our upcoming "working group" here with BMTC
• Try to show him as much of the good suggestions that have come up here so far

I made a presentation yesterday to Mr.Subramanya (BBMP Commisioner) at his office about the single bus lane idea. He was quite interested and said he would discuss with his committee and revert. He also agreed very well that the solution was not to build or widen more roads or flyovers. He also mentioned some problems that are being faced with the underpasses construction on Bellary road - the actual costs were much higher than anticipated because numerous problems had cropped up - conduits for sewerage, water, telephone, electricity, etc that were marked incorrectly on admittedly very old drawings that now need to be re-aligned !

[Here is the presentation, prepared with a lot of help from folks and material here on Praja]

In the "unlocking bangalore" debate I come from 2 or 3 contexts.

a) I believe there is at least 30% capacity on our roads which are wasted by non adherence and non implementation of the law( both traffic laws and a myriad of civic laws )

b) I believe that of the various enforcers/government bodies out there ,the traffic police is one of the better ones , but who are are always at the worst end of the stick, tremendously underresourced and unempowered.

It probably started in late March (28/3/08), when Supreme Court issued notices asking Karnataka government to respond as to why the SC order on BMIC is not implemented. The notice was returnable in six weeks. Fast forward that much time, and on May 7, we were told (TOI - typically pro NICE) that government has issued a go ahead on BMIC:

"... the government has paved the way for completion of the peripheral and link roads, which were stalled by the H D Kumaraswamy government. Besides, an empowered committee headed by chief secretary Sudhakar Rao has been asked to take all necessary steps for early completion of NICE's projects ..."