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Mobilicity - CiSTUP Foundation Day event on March 6, 2013 - my report

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Prof J Satya Saikumar started the event by inviting Prof TG Sitaram and Smt V Manjula to the Dias. Smt Manjula 1987 IAS batch is currently the Commissioner at DULT.

Directorate of Urban Land Transport is responsible for the transport initiatives in the state of Karnataka. These are parking policy, Mass transit, congestion, BRT and road safety to mention a few. The department works in close association with BBMP. Ms Jaya introduced the Praja Research and analysis group to the audience.

Prof Sai Kumar touched upon the efforts of Prof Balram involved in the imitative of the government of Karnataka in helping to set up a new Department of CiSTUP. The MOU was signed on 2 June 2009 at Satish Dhavan Auditorium inaugurated by Mr. Yeddyurappa, the then Chief Minister of Karnataka.  DULT is associated closely with the department since 2011, with a corpus of BMTC, KSRTC and BDA. CiSTUP foundation day Lecture by Prof Dinesh Mohan is slated for 26th 4:00 PM at Faculty hall. 32 project reports of the department are on the Website. Currently there are twelve Doctoral students in the Department. CISTUP has sponsored the cycling programme in the campus. The main projects are:-

  1. Namma Railu
  2. Cycling [NMT]
  3. Auto Rickshaw Study
  4. Mantri Mall congestion
  5. BUS Priority System [Praja]
  6. Cycle lanes in Jayanagar

The key note address was given by Smt Manjula commissioner DULT. She felt proud of her association with CiSTUP. The interaction was at the policy level to identify projects towards sustainable Bangalore. The main points were:-

  1. Optimal utilization of resources
  2. Harmony with nature
  3. Protection of green spaces
  4. Energy efficiency
  5. Grid locking
  6. Transportation of waste
  7. An allocation 40 thousand Crores for Metro
  8. BTRAC
  9. Suburban Railway
  10. Peripheral ring road
  11. route rationalization
  12. Equitable allocation of space
  13. Parking space pricing
  14. Multiple cities development
  15. SEZ town ships
  16. Vertical growth

The main challenge is about conflicting requirement balancing. After the inaugural session the audience was divided into 4 parallel Bangalore groups:-

  1. Moving
  2. Greener
  3. Cleaner and
  4. The Urban Sprawl

These groups split themselves in different class rooms and rejoined with their agreed briefs. The briefs were presented by the respective group volunteers to the audience in the concluding session after Lunch.

Here are Some Pictures of the event:-

1 - Welcome

2 – Murali Dhar Rao being Felicitated 

  

3 – Smt Manjula Delivering her address.

 

4 – Online Presence from USA

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psaram42's picture

Some more pictures

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5 – Lone Cop in attendance.

 

6 – Foundation Day Shirts for the Gathering.

 

7 – The four groups.

 

8 – The four groups briefing

 

9 – Lunch break

 

!0 Murali lighting the Symbolic Lamp

 

psaram42's picture

Clean Bangalore group discussions

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This group was concerned with “clean Bangalore”. The following list of 14 items resulted in the couple of hours deliberations. The the top 4 prioritized items are:-

  1. Corrupt system
  2. Poor governance
  3. Enforcement of rules
  4. Lack of community ownership

The remaining are:-

  1. Poor / inefficient waste categories
  2. Implementation of policy
  3. Old inefficient vehicle still on use
  4. Rules / behavior capture
  5. Substandard work execution by BBMP
  6. Lack of ownership and co ordination
  7. Inequitable distribution
  8. Provision of civic amenities by government
  9. non conpliance of rules and bad civic behavior
  10. Provision of civic amenities

One of the doctoral students made a presentation on the post lunch combined session.

murali772's picture

some points I had raised

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Thanks to Anantram for the fairly comprehensive report (besides giving me the pride of place). Overall, a good event, and hopefully, we will be able to move forward on some of the actionable points decided upon (which I expect Mr Sai Kumar will be publishing soon).

For those who attended Session1, the following are the links to blogs on the points I had raised during the deliberations:

1) Pedestrian over-bridges & Sky-walks
2) End to BMTC/ KSRTC monopoly
3) Possible solution to hazards faced by cyclists

And, the point I made (in the concluding session) about raising RTI queries on tree felling, is accessible here

Two points I overlooked raising are:
1) the need for removal/ re-location of places of worship from road-sides, where the city of Jabalpur has set a shining example - check this
2) Need for outsourcing maintenance of public toilets, where Delhi apparently has set a fine example, which fact "Namma Corporators" discovered accidentally during a recent visit - check this

Muralidhar Rao
kamalakar pandit's picture

Sir, If all these are things

ಮೇಲೆ
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Sir,

If all these are things are implemeted most of the normal citizen like me will be happy !! what I have observed is that...all people @ Cistup/DULT are very qualified/experienced .....but unfortunately the policy makers are not that qualified to understand, thats the pitty. see the fate of NAMMA RAILU...or BRTS...no updates at all !!

Today I read that BDA is planning to have an elevated road from palace road to  Mekhri circle to Hebbal ?? the simple question that comes to my mind is why to widen palace road ? - if elevated road is built ?

Any way, I am convinced that all these presentations will be implemented if POLITICAL WILL is there !! other wise its just building castles in the air...nothing else..

 

Regards

kamal.

idontspam's picture

Excellent links vasanth. Have

ಮೇಲೆ
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Excellent links vasanth. Have shared it with TAC members also. The picture on page 9 of the sustainable commission report here is exactly what we have been talking about for a long time on Praja.in

s_yajaman's picture

Cost of car ownership

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Apart from the social costs that cars impose on us, they are not cheap to own.  You might want to put up a poster on this in the next Mobilicity :).

Assume a person drives a car about 10000 km (mostly in the city).  Or about 40 km every working day.  Let's assume it costs Rs.10,00,000 to buy and gives 10km/l in city conditions. 

Petrol cost  = Rs.7.50/km

Maintenance @ two services, oil change, etc = 0.50/km

Tyres @ 50000 km life and Rs.25000 for a set of 5 = 0.50/km

Insurance @ Re.1/km

Depreciation @12% - Rs.12/km

Opportunity cost @ 8% - Rs 8/km (you could put the money in a bank or the stock market)

 

If you employ a driver - that is another Rs.100,000 a year or Rs.10/km

Total cost w/o driver - Rs.30/km

Total cost with driver - Rs.40/km

This does not include the opportunity cost of your time spent in crawling traffic - 3 hrs/day.  If this person earns Rs.200,000/month his cost of leisure will be somewhere in the Rs.500/hr range (just an estimate).  This is another Rs.1500/commute or Rs.40/km.  Conversely he could put in another 2 hrs in the office and get ahead in the rat race and maybe get an additional/bonus of Rs.250,000 for the year (Rs.25/km)

Does it not make sense to shift closer to your workspot (1-2 km away) even if it costs Rs.20000/month more, walk both ways, avoid the stress and gain some time and good health?

Srivathsa

 

Drive safe.  It is not just the car maker which can recall its product.

Vasanth's picture

BMTC irrational fare hikes is a setback for sustainable transpor

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One of the major setbacks for Bangalore PT is BMTC as Murali has quoted in many places. They are too much profit oriented unlike their sister concern KSRTC whose city bus fares are moderate in neighbouring city Mysore.

In Mysore, from City Bus Stand to Chamundi Hills, the fare for a ride in Volvo is only 15 rupees, whereas here in Bangalore, fare to a cross two stops is 15 rupees. Every diesel hike, they increase the fare by 5 rupees. Even an ordinary BMTC bus charges 8 rupees for the same. I see lot of people who cannot walk nor can drive any vehicle for such distances go by paying hefty in BMTC in miserable conditions. Number of buses to public is also coming down due to sub contracting to ORRCA, Manyata etc.

Two stops will be at a distance of nearly 1-2 kms which can be covered on a fuel efficient scooter or bike in around 4 rupees more conveniently. People tend to use private vehicles for both convenience and economy. It would have been more good if people would have used bicycles or walked along for covering such distances along with being beneficial to health, reduction in emissions and congestion. But, the Bangalore roads and mentaility of the drivers (especially cab and luggage vehicle drivers) not making it happen.

In the above article link, they say a car is an aggressive vehicle on the road dominating things. More than that, our drivers  in Bangalore are even more dominating, non-courteous and indisciplined worsening things in Bangalore making people think twice to take up walking or cycling.

Some things need to be done for making our city more sustainable is

1. More walkable and bicycle friendly streets with a divider seperated bicycle lanes not just marking like being done in Jayanagar where only cars are parked.

2. Strict police action like done in western countries if an accident occurs to a Pedestrain or Cyclist.

3. Reduction in Bus Fares and improvement in services. All the buses are jam packed, despite of that how BMTC is going into loss is the question - It is their irrational route allocation with over allocation of buses to specific routes like the 335E,500D and  500C which runs empty causing them to loose what they gained in jam packed ordinary buses.

Lesser the fare and more local routes such as FDR-1 and FDR-2 would be more beneficial to people.

4. Encourage more work from homes in the offices and modification of SEZ rules to have local offices spread across the city so that a person in west of Bangalore can work in West Bangalore office, east of Bangalore to work in East office reducing criss cross traffic.

Intra city movement until the Metro is fully operational is fully dependent upon BMTC which is not at all doing a good job.  Once Metro is operational, BMTC would have a competitor for long distance operations such as ITPL and EC. At that time, BMTC might keep their fares checked. 

 

Vasanth's picture

Lower income group are struggling a lot for commute

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Here is a link:

http://bangalore.citizenmatters.in/articles/view/5053-a-costly-trip-to-work

Atal Saarige blah blahs are not serving any purpose.

 

Bheema.Upadhyaya's picture

And here  goes the comparison

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And here  goes the comparison of electric with other modes of transport. I am looking for comparison of e-Car with other car, but I do not have right info with me

" My mantra to public bodies=> Enable->Educate->Enforce. Where does  DDC  fit?"
srinidhi's picture

lame argument..

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Its really a lame argument that BMTC is costly because it makes profits and has better up keep of its fleet..

Public transport is to help people and making money from them is not the only goal for them..BMTC is exhorbitant especially for shorter rides too..sometimes it makes more sense and cheaper to auto pool too..

I would say enough of the fancy volvos..and let the fleet numbers tilt more towards more efficient non-ac busses..

How about giving discounts for passes for green card holders?

idontspam's picture

AC Volvo buses

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On the other hand I would say Volvo's are the prime reason a lot of white collar workers use public transport. The only reason the IT belt traffic is not worse is because of the A/C Volvo's.

I personally prefer to use the volvos to work & back but thats because I can afford to. My point would be instead of using non AC older blue buses for the non white collar public they should get volvo ride at the blue bus rates while people like me get to pay a preium rate. Is it possible to pull this off? How?

MaheshK's picture

Discounts and some tax exemptions

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srinidhi is right. Its time to provide discounts and also write off in the taxes for using public transport. For example, Canada does it. I got 15% off on the bus pass as I worked for the govt. Over that I could write off the annual cost of the bus pass in the taxes (all bus passholders can write it off). May be its time to look at the incentives.

vatsan007's picture

More conducive measures needed

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* Short distance travel is really costly in BMTC and it works out cheaper by pooling auto-rickshaws. For short distance, BMTC can think of introducing "Swaraj Mazda" type buses in good frequency at a lesser price. This is run today in some segments (Eg: Jayanagar IV block to Jamboo Savari Dinne), but these buses are maintained poor condition. Typically, I see these buses have already outlived their lives, but BMTC is trying to extract as much as these from these. Again, the intent is to dump on some routes. Some routes like "Banashankari to Silk board", etc.. need these buses. 

 

* More Blue Buses should be introduced during peak hours. There used to be a service called Peak Hour Service (PHS) earlier, where more buses used to run in routes during peak hours. PHS should be run on identified routes.

 

* Buses introduced should have both conductors and drivers. Driver donning multiple roles (he has only 2 hands, but manages -- driving, giving tickets, giving change and what not... he becomes a god with multiple hands in this avatar) leads to traffic jams, hapazhard parking of buses in bus stops, reaching the destination late as driver himself takes time in distributing tickets. This has to be avoided at any cost.

 

* There is nothing bad with Volvo buses (even though fare is on the higher side), as this can be considered for premium travel and used to generate more revenue. This is really working well on the ORR (Banashankari to Hebbal -- 500 series) as most of the buses are packed during peak hours. This is reducing private vehicle usage on this stretch to some extent. However, the only pain point with these buses are hapazhard parking in bus stops and drivers stopping the buses everywhere with just a wave of a hand.

- Srivatsan

 

- Srivatsan

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