To day I spent a few hours discussing with Shri Shailendra Singh, Special Officer, at Directorate of Urban Land transport, of Urban Development Department, [DULT] govt of Karnataka. Shailender Singh is a Jat from Haryana and not a Sikh Sardar. I found him to be a fine / capable / forthright officer. During our interaction we came across one Architect Vishal Pujar who is helping DULT on the design of a bus stop. Mr. Singh was requesting for a 3D Google sketch up model including a walk through. However I found that Mr. Pujar does not have access to the professional Google Sketch up modeler.
Smt M Manjula an IAS officer is the Current commissioner of DULT. DULT has released a “foot path standard”. I could not get a hard [Xerox] copy. It was not possible for our friend Singh, to give me the soft copy ie CD, either.
I tried and explained mr. singh that
- Road is basically a volume not a surface. As such should be treated as a volume only.
- All the cables should be underground including power and TV.
- The BESCOM transformers also need to be under ground. [No Idea whether this is possible]
- A Road has Storm water Drains at both its side all along, to prevent the rain water from fludding
- It also has Sewage lines running at a depth grater than the SWD
- Currently in Bangalore the Sewage / storm water mixing is becomming common.
- with proper road standards and corresponding design this prvention of mixing as well as pedestrian comfort is possible.
- with SWD free of Sewage water We can see that Bellandure lake, the queen of lakes in Bangalore will get back the Fish and marine diversity it had earlier, than the flourshing hycynth, covering a large part of the lake, as of now.
- This hucynth is used as a feed to cattle, though.
Yeddurappa has donated IISc Rs 30 crores and as such they have praja and DULT involved with them wrt Land Transport in the city of Bangalore. I hope there are currently projects relevant to road standards as ME / Phd projects. If not we can propose some.
I sincerely hope with praja / DULT / IISc co operation something worth while comes up for the city of Bangalore roads, comparable to those in Singapore. Why not?
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Comments
DULT has released a
Wonder who it was released to? BBMP? Are the standards binding on the implementing agency or recommendations? If they are recommendations, BBMP should evaluate feasibility and decide to accept as is or modify as required. Hopefully, on-ground implementation occurs soon and can be replicated across the city.
Similar questions with regard to the bus stop design. Hopefully, it is coordinated with the foot path standards.