Dedicated bus lanes - a presentation for BBMP

I made a presentation yesterday to Mr.Subramanya (BBMP Commisioner) at his office about the single bus lane idea. He was quite interested and said he would discuss with his committee and revert. He also agreed very well that the solution was not to build or widen more roads or flyovers. He also mentioned some problems that are being faced with the underpasses construction on Bellary road - the actual costs were much higher than anticipated because numerous problems had cropped up - conduits for sewerage, water, telephone, electricity, etc that were marked incorrectly on admittedly very old drawings that now need to be re-aligned !

[Here is the presentation, prepared with a lot of help from folks and material here on Praja]

The real issue with traffic is that these umpteen measures when implemented actually worsen things - I prefer to call flyover construction or privatization of bus services as short term or stop-gap. The numerous flyovers - have they improved things? If they have for traffic movement, then they have also induced more traffic & bred a new cult of 'trigger' happy drivers, honking away & breaking rules with impunity in their care-a-dam attitudes, increasing alarmingly in nos. as the days pass.

Will privatization of bus services solve all problems? Though it might seem more efficient initially, in the long run, it will breed a new cult of similar drivers with even larger machines since profits will be linked to quicker services, and quicker services will be dependent on the traffic situation in a vicious cycle.

What is the solution? Everybody talks of improvement in public transport, but where & how will it 'localize' traffic to manageable levels, given that their quality & efficiency is dependent on traffic conditions? Today, traffic is a nightmare as there is no 'local' traffic - vehicles ply from one end of the city to the other end, all across & use all available roads.

As I have advocated all along, I very strongly believe that unless bus (be it private or public) is prioritized with lanes - and buses combine with the Metro to offer a better option to get from one end to the other end of Bangalore in quicker time, in more comfort, and at lesser cost - nothing will change.

Only if initiatives that address this are unleashed (& addressing this is not easy) will things come to order as they would sound the death knell for the 2-wheeler, the auto, the SUVs, the mini-buses, the cars. Till then, let's buckle up & drive, & hope we arrive safe !