Last evening, I happened to watch the ‘Devil’s Advocate’ programme on CNN-IBN, where Karan Thapar was interviewing Sunita Narayan (of CSE). The subject of discussion was TATA motor’s NANO. And, contrary to the norm, both were generally agreed on many of the points that came up.

I am referring to the Indore bus services, which has been touted by many as the World's best public-private bus partnership - Indore. I had raised a few questions about the Indore model, vide my posting under the caption ‘better bussing’ on 22nd Dec, ’07.

Subsequently, I had attended the seminar on ‘Effective Traffic Management’ convened jointly by the DPAR and Centre for Public Policy, IIM, Bangalore, at the Vikas Soudha on the 4th Jan, at which a presentation was made by Mr Shukla from Indore (he had come in place of Mr Vivek Agarwal, IAS, Dist Magistrate, who had conceived the entire scheme and who was originally supposed to come), and the answers to the questions I had raised became more or less clear, based on which I have drawn my conclusions.

Traffic is one thing and Public Transport another. Traffic is about moving vehicles, public transport people. Something like BTRAC is aimed at traffic management - wider roads, flyovers, signals an stuff. Enforcement on roads, how to drive etc are also more like traffic topics. Getting to know and discuss the upcoming BMLTA, tracking BMTC's efforts to enhance its services, and watching BMLTA, BMTC and Metro all work together to create public transport infrastructure - all this needs a dedicated 'forum' of its own.

So, we have created a new high level project (see the list under "track projects') for the purpose. We expect that folks like Mr Muralidhar Rao, Sudhir, Vasanth, City.zen and others would contribute their awareness, knowledge and opinions there. Use the "Public Transport" label if you want your posts/threads to appear under this 'project'.