Skip to Content

Blogs

Congrats Naveen and thanks Deccan Herald

Thanks Deccan Herald for taking note of Praja. They are carrying Capt Naveen's suggestion about Koramangala 100 ft road today in full, and have mentioned Praja as a site launched by "a few IT professionals with concerns about IT capital of the country". Congrats Capt Naveen, you got almost half of page 3 on Sunday DH!

Road over drains - the project is back

It was just over an year ago when BBMP talked about the project - about 250 km of roads over Bangalore's storm water drains. Local papers, when covering BBMP budget today, are saying that this project is now funded. Here is a quote from TOI:

Questions for BIAL (The first List)

I have compiled the list of questions. As predicted there are LOTS! Practically I dont think BIAL will have the time to answer each and every one of them! After a point they would care too much about doing so. I suggest we condensing it by trying to answer them ourselves. If it is still not a convincing answer then we can go ahead with it.

Protest against Error-ridden Voters' list - 31st March

Vote Bengaluru protests against error-ridden electoral rolls in Bangalore

Date: Monday, 31st March 2008
Venue: Mahathma Gandhi Statue, M.G. Road
Time: 10.30 AM to 12.00 noo

All are welcome. Please come in large numbers.

Dear friends,

CVS - return to Inspector Raaj

When a tax computation system changes, citizens are naturally apprehensive. This is currently the case with the proposed introduction of Capital Value Scheme (CVS) for property tax in Bangalore as mandated in the Karnataka Municipal Corporations Act. This changes the widely welcomed Self Assessment Scheme (SAS) that has been in operation since 2000.

One convincing reason for us to use public transport and bicycles

They say a picture says a thousand words. Here is a poster that show the space occupied by same number of people using Cars, bus and cycles.
Can it get any more convincing than this?
Courtesy: Core77 blog.

TOI Unlock Bangalore Event - Learnings

As you all might have read in the papers, TOI had an Unlock Bangalore event at The Leela on March 28th 2008. Many say the event was merely a publicity stunt (as no other paper was allowed inside), but even so the secondary results were fruitful.

Harnessing a scarce resource

Governor Rameshwar Thakur's call for constituting a 'Water Resources Regulatory Authority', vide the report in your columns on 26th March under the caption 'PPP can be answer to water scarcity', has not come a day too soon.

Dependability of BMTC in question

Within the same week, there have been two instances of BMTC buses being involved in serious crashes, supposedly due to 'brake failure'. In one, the conductor died, even as many were injured, and quite seriously too, in both.

The need for BRTS

This refers to the article in TOI & the guest column by Muralidhar Rao.

The basic premise on which public transport is based is that if the road seems too narrow with high volumes of traffic, there is a case for public transport. The higher the volume of traffic on a road, the stronger is the case for public transport.

In India, the low–cost /low–quality public buses are now not preferred by the upwardly mobile strata. Rail-based systems (such as Metro /Monorail) are very expensive to build & maintain & will therefore, not have extensive reach for a long time to come. The city cannot make do with widening roads & adding elevated roads continuously. No city has ever been able to “build” its way out of the problem. A new, faster & cost efficient system is required for quality conscious groups, over & above the existing low quality bus network. BRTS fulfills these requirements & is perhaps, the only available alternative worth exploring.

The Traffic Quagmire – Using Logic & Rationality the Right Way

Vasanth - your post ‘Using Technology the Right Way’ made good reading.

We can come up with umpteen reasons for the chaos that traffic is, but simply put, there is just one real core issue – the city is trying to cope with traffic loads for which it’s road network certainly was never designed nor envisaged. Despite having lost the battle time & again, all efforts so far have been to satisfy the ‘Car lobbies’, even at the expense of pedestrians, bicyclists & public transport users. Planning & Construction of the Metro rail is the only exception.Plans, policies & procedures that involve a multi-dimensional approach to seek long-term & permanent solutions have never materialized, though efforts have been made.

Questions for BIAL - your turn!

[Update: Date for BIAL trip moved to Sunday, Apr 6th. Unfortunately, only 20 can go. We will give preference to long time members and those who write/comment a lot on BIAL here].

Slum re-development under JNNURM

 

South Western Railway - please wake up and listen to us!

Thank you Business-standard for striking the right notes (See "Karnataka ignores ..."). So many of us see the potential of SW Railway's assets around our city and wish they woke up and listened to us.
"... experts feel that the Indian Railways’ network in and around the city can be utilised to ferry passengers at a fraction of the cost ..."
 
 
The point in the article that disappoints us most is:
 

Short term fix - Lease out HAL airport to BIAL?

On the ever so hot HAL vs BIAL debate, I saw an interesting letter to editor column of TOI (Fri Mar 21) where author Narayan G sort of suggested this - Why not lease HAL airport to BIAL itself? That could be a short term fix till BBMP/state government improves connectivity. BIAL would get revenue from HAL as well as BIAL for sometime, hopefully that will give them enough revenues to keep them from going to courts over breach of contract. We would get better facilities at HAL airport. And since BIAL would want to gain efficiency of operations by consolidating all air traffic at BIA, they will keep pushing everyone on the connectivity issue and wouldn't want to hang on to HAL for ever.
Syndicate content

Praja.in comment guidelines

Posting Guidelines apply for comments as well. No foul language, hate mongering or personal attacks. If criticizing third person or an authority, you must be fact based, as constructive as possible, and use gentle words. Avoid going off-topic no matter how nice your comment is. Moderators reserve the right to either edit or simply delete comments that don't meet these guidelines. If you are nice enough to realize you violated the guidelines, please save Moderators some time by editing and fixing yourself. Thanks!



about seo