Nobody has clue how 2020 or 2030 Bangalore Transportation should be MADE to look. Remember this is different from how it will look if left to go on like now.
Sankey Road incident has highlighted the cesspool that BBMP has become. With non-existent targets, inefficient strategies & self-benefitting prioritization citizens have been left with ZERO confidence in the city administrators. Bangalore is growing without a plan & killing commerce is being used as an excuse for inefficiencies in planning by the public body. The word "development" is the most misused one in the city today
We need to move towards a PIL to tell the administrators they need to get in shape. Bangalore cannot live with a generation of administrators with no clue on how to plan for the city. Or even if they do are powerless because of the state of the politics inside it. Firefighting is putting us in far greater misery than running towards a plan.
Here are the bare essentials that need to be told clearly to the citizens & not via GIS maps or generic motherhood statements masquerading as a vision.
1. What are the modal share targets for 2020, BMR wide & within BBMP, ORR & CBD areas across categories - Bus, Mono, Metro, CRS, Trams, Walking, Cycling, Pvt transport, other modes
2. What is the current status against that modal share targets, private traffic density & steps to reduce them
3. What is the current road use efficiency (MOUD has indexes for computation) & steps to improve it.
4. What are the pvt transport disincentives that will be adopted what is the methodology & year by year targets for the same till 2020. Include policy measures that need to be adopted for the same.
5. Different modes of PT with target share for each mode with year by year targets till 2020
6. Steps toward assigning responsibilities, plugging gaps in city planning & execution vis a vis traffic planning for property development
7. Citizen oversight body to be consitituted which will measure the compliance to these targets & also be responsible for gathering citizen feedback on all of the above.
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It appears on the face of it
It appears on the face of it that your concern is on Private traffic density and wish to reduce them. There are measures to check the private vehicle density by disincentive methods and offer incentives to encourage the use of public transport system by providing uniform system of better public transport throughout the city.
In addition to traffic congestion we also need to focus our attention on other areas, such as drainage, water, greenery around and within the city, etc.
Priorotize Metro Completion, including Phase 2, Mono and BRT/BPS
Govt. should priorotize Phase 1 Metro Completion without any waits for funds.
Clearance of the hurdles such as property acquisition in courts should be completed on priority.Property acquisition / Tree felling for Metro and road widening should be distinguished well by the citizens of Bangalore.
Phase 2 Metro Planning, land acquisition should start when the Phase 1 is in progress. In otherwords, Phase 1 should not be a road block.
Monorail has become just a dream without any progress on its front. We should have atleast the Metro feeder Monorail routes civil work started by the time Phase 1 Metro completes.
No progress so far on BRT on ORR between Hebbal and Silkboard. Flyover constructions do not have any design specific to BRT.
Namma Railu (Commuter Rail) should take priority, probably more priority than Namma Metro since it is a solution in hand. MPs and MLAs should push further.
Further road widening should not be brought to a halt until all the Metro, Mono and other PT modes become fully operational. Only mini flyovers / underpasses should be undertaken to ease high capacity junctions.
Direct Mayor Election - Still a distant dream
ABIDE Proposed direct Mayor election for Bangalore in its Agenda for Bangalore. There is no progress whatsoever in this regard. Both ABIDE and the BJP Government have kept silent. Citizens do not know who will be their Mayor allowing Parties to decide. Parties will have their own queue, influence, favourism etc.. and do not consider any experience / eduction / knowledge of the person in electing a Mayor for a Metropolitan city like Bangalore. This has resulted in today's scene.
The phenomenon of
The phenomenon of increased road capacity increasing road usage is now described as ‘induced traffic’ and despite being a simple supply-demand issue continues to be neglected in the benefit-cost ratio calculations relating to major roads across the world.
Figure summarises this contentious issue. It shows that cities with higher congestion have lower fuel use and cities with less congestion use more fuel. As suggested this appears to be because, although vehicles in lesser congested cities are moving more efficiently, they are being used much more and for longer distances than in cities with more congestion, while in these less congested cities greener modes are being used less.
Finding a better balance between freeing congestion and saving fuel by facilitating better usage of sustainable transport needs to be the goal. This usually means charging more for fuel, parking or road use and using this money to build alternatives to car use
The data from Tables show that mass transit modes are generally in the order of 50 to 80% more efficient than cars. However, evidence shows that mass transit does even better at saving fuel – especially if it is a rail system. This is because 1 km of train travel has been shown to save between 5 and 7 kms of car travel.
A much more effective way to reduce congestion and save fuel sustainably involves striking a balance between enabling personal vehicle travel and enabling greener modes. If congestion can be reduced by reductions in car use then a city has a more sustainable solution to congestion and fuel use. London put in a congestion tax to reduce congestion and pay for the motor vehicle’s external costs. Singapore and Oslo had also done this but London was the first big city to attempt a city-wide approach.
The London initiative ringed the city with sensors that enabled people to pay automatically or to fine those who did not pay when they crossed the cordon into the main part of London. Most importantly they put the money raised back into better transit. The result was a 15% reduction in traffic and much better bus services, both because they were able to meet their schedules more easily and because they had more buses. The 60,000 fewer vehicles per day was much preferred by those who chose to continue driving and 50-60% of those who stopped driving changed to transit. For the cities of the world, it showed that such intervention can be done, that you can tax the car to make greener urban transportation work.
Other cities are now moving to a congestion tax; Stockholm found that there was a reduction in congestion of 25% at the morning rush and 40% in the evening, about half the people moved to transit with a 4.5% increase in transit patronage (from a very high base).
Source
visioning
In Singapore’s next ‘green road map,’ its 10-year development plan, the country aims to go from being ‘a garden city’ to ‘a city in a garden.’ “The difference might sound very small,” says Poon Hong Yuen, the chief executive of the country’s National Parks Board, “but it’s a bit like saying my house has a garden and my house is in the middle of a garden. What it means is having pervasive greenery, as well as biodiversity, including wildlife, all around you.”
For the full text of the report in the Deccan Herald, click here.
This is what visioning is all about.
TAKE PRR ALSO INTO CONSIDERATION
Dear Prajayists,
The Peripheral Ring Road was conceived in the year 2004 itself to ease the traffic in the Bangalore City. But, the Road has not seen the light of the day even after 7 years. It is a well thought out project but lacking the will of the Govt. to implement it. Don't you feel that it will go a long way to decongest the traffic in the city? BDA has taken all efforts to implement the scheme after the project was approved by the Cabinet. But, the Govt. has to resolve the vexatious compensation issue for the land losers but they are delaying it for the reasons best known to them. Even the Honourable Supreme Court also has taken conginsance of the travails of the land losers. There is a bill on the anvil at the Centre as per the statement of the Honourable Minister for Urban Development Mr. Jayaram Ramesh that the land acquisition and the compensation payable would be streamlined. Why should not the State of Karnataka resolve this issue quickly so that the PRR could be laid?
Dr.K.Kizar Mohamed