Blogs

Karnataka High Court admits PIL against Road Widening Projects in Bangalore

Issues emergent notices to Respondents

This is not a solution but an attempt to spark off a debate to create a solution

I have tried to work out a method to organize bus travel within Bangalore. The inspiration for this started from London’s Underground – which is based on the concept of zones and lines. I have illustrated my idea of how Bangalore can be divided. It is a combination of the “Spoke” and the “Zone” concept.

Firstly I have divided Bangalore into Zones. Each zone will have one TTMC. See Fig 1 (Click to see original)

The World Customers' Day was observed by BESCOM in its usual ritualistic style on Saturday, the 15th March by holding a workshop on 'Customer Care', in association with Public Affairs Centre (PAC), Swabhimana, Consumer Advocacy, and Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC). Of the audience of a 100 odd people, only some 30 were members of Civil Society groups (RWA's, etc), the rest comprising mostly of BESCOM officials. Seeing this, the chief guest, Dr Samuel Paul, Chairman, PAC, remarked that the poor turn out was perhaps an indication of the high level of satisfaction with BESCOM services.

BMTC and Airindia SATS/Air Deccan have tied up at BIAL to ferry passengers in the Low Floor Red Volvos from the gates to the airplane. I don't get it! The volvos in the city are going packed, the frequency is less than what i can/should be - why can't these busses run on the road instead. To me these busses are a much needed addition to the existing public transport. For the 2 Min ride from the Gate to the Plane, we dont need to use this "fancy" bus! Or we can get a Sutlej or a Tata-Globus/eicher/swaraj mazda for the airport!

Okay then. Time now to test ourselves, and the theory, that with a bigger pool (1000+ now) of members, we will have correspondingly bigger numbers for on-ground activities. Let us start our first "working group" (or WG) on Praja. Taking the window of opportunity offered by Mr Tripathy, and well aware that the subject is most popular thus far, the first WG will be on Public Transport. Before forming this group, let us figure out this generic concept of WG:

Dear Prajegaley,

Pls lets all start tracking this part of B'lore's Infrastructure too. This was supposed to have been thrown open in the month of June 2008. Now, recently when I was on this stretch, there is a LOT of work still pending [at some points, there are no Columns erected yet !].

more pics here

Update @ 2115 hrs;-

So it did happen. Naveen, Murali sir, Vasanth, Praveen, myself got 30 minutes of Mr Tripathy's time in his office. After introducing Praja etc, we were planning to present our (rather, Naveen's) slides on single dedicated lane based BRTS idea. But Mr Tripathy said he was short on time, and would look at it later at leisure. However, he warned us that he just can't do BRTS by himself. He is only a bus operator, and owns only the rolling stock. We should go to other bodies (BBMP/BDA/Traffic police to get non-rolling stock infrastructure for BRTS) to push for it. He then updated us on the BRTS-on-ORR project a bit. He seemed well versed with BRTS, its need and advantages, Bogota etc. Though, his take on the key reason for the success of buses at Bogota is - the interesting ways in that city ran campaigns to educate citizens on road discipline.