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The dry leaves disposal problem.

Everything else

As the spring season comes every year there is the dry leaves season preceding it. The street sweepers have hectic work gathering the dry leaves by sweeping them into big mounds. It is really funny that the regular garbage collectors are no way responsible for the leaves final disposal.

Work is on, June 2010 new date

Infrastructure

Work is on, many have confirmed. June 2010 is being comunicated as the planned end date for remaining work. Residents or commuters of the area should post pictures here to keep tab on the work, so that all get to know if June 2010 date is realistic.

Given all the new information, there is no need for planning a protest right now, let us wait till end of May. Sounds good?

Bad Planning by Mantri Mall Malleswaram

TrafficTraffic jams

Quite a few days back i wrote about the Bad planning of Bigbazaar, where their were very less parking space made available and the vehicles hundreds of them parked on the road or adjecent bylanes, creating major traffic jams in that area.

Now it is the turn of Mantri Mall @ Malleswaram, in the weekend of last week and this week, the entire area is in a  mess, by 4 pm in the evening( when i crossed that area) , the mall has put a sign board saying the parking is full. You can see hundreds of vehicles both two wheelers and four wheelers being parked in the adjacent roads, creating traffic jam, which amounted to about 45 mins of travel for a short distance of half a  KM. You can see people with vehicles arguing with the police and the mall's security guards for parking.

Report on 'Suvarna Bengaluru Pranalike'

Governance

This was organised by Janaagraha's Jaagte Raho campaign at 6 PM on Friday, the 19th Mar, at the Town Hall, Bengaluru, in the background of the BBMP elections being held on the coming Sunday (28th March,'10)  

On infrastructure
From Mr R V Deshpande of Congress to Ms Shabha Karandlaje to Mr Narayanaswamy of JD(S), all made claims of how they were responsible for building up the infrastructure for the city - from the Hebbal fly-over to the K R Puram cable-stayed fly-over, to the signal-free corridors, etc, etc. Towards the end, when a question raised by a participant as to 'where the pedestrian came into view in all of these', was put to them, suddenly, each made a u-turn and started talking about how they plan to make the city totally pedestrian and cycle friendly.

Well, to symbolise the entire polity's commitment to this changed approach, can a consensus be possibly arrived at to demolish the totally useless National College fly-over, apart from of course dropping the Tagore circle underpass and such useless projects?

On corruption

Padmanabhanagar doomed - rest of Bengaluru too?

Governance

The following is the report by Sri N S Mukunda, Convener of Abhyudaya, a federation of RWAs in Padmanabhanagar, on the debate they organised between the BBMP Corporator candidates on 19th March. The prospects for the ward look pathetic. And, like Mr Mukunda has pointed out "I am sure that the expecrience is similar except in the degree of disappointment in other constituencies as well", and offered the possible way out as "like many of our colleaguews have done in this election only jump into the fray and contest and try to win - time we start thinking of far beyond this tokenism".

We from Abhyudya in ward 182 Padmanabhanagar,  had a debate with the candidates of Congress (Sri Murali), JD(S) (Sri Anjanappa). The BJP candidate Sri L Srinivasa, the ex corporator did not turn up, in spite of being invited. The debate took place yesterday evening at 5.30 PM and went on till 7.15 PM.

BTMC Issues - From RCA Perspective-2

BusPublic Transport

 This is in continuation of my last post.  This time I thought to take delayed disturbed scheduling. As you all aware, RCA is simple technique to find out root causes and thus first step to eliminate bad causes. Some of the caused may be repetitive from last post. But if repeated it should be considered as a major cause and should be given priority.

 

Effect  -

Buses not operating in time thus causing inconvinience to public and to BMTC scheduling system itself

Causes  due to - 

1. Traffic Jam at Signal due to

         -> Long Signals

         -> Heavy Vehicle Rush

         -> No traffic Management in junctions

         -> No signal

2. Traffic Jam at Roads due to

Local residential registration, specially for rental tenants

I think the local registration and yearly renewal should be started and made mandatory in Indian towns, cities. Currently its very difficult to track/confirm proof of residence. I believe this will help in several ways if planned and implemented/enforced well. It may be one difficult/massive project, its beyond my imagination. But I feel strongly believe it will be best complementary project for UID. Both put together will make it.

India - Dirtiest of All !

Everything else

54% of India or 638 million people do not have access to toilets & defecate in the open !

This is over 55% of the total for all such people in the world - we certainly hold the dubious distinction of outranking all others by a huge margin :) - In second place is Indonesia, with a paltry 58 million.

The report also states that 18% of urban India indulge in this practice (Mumbai, Kolkata & Chennai might account for a large part of this). The percentage for rural India is as high as 69%.

Figures for some 'top' countries are as follows:

Protecting trees - Indiranagar

Environment



Knowing me to be a tree lover, members of the local coomunity keep calling asking to know as to what is to be done when they notice trees being felled in their neighborhood, the latest being the above massacre of 4 full-grown trees (very similar to the one that has been spared - seen at the extreme right of the picture) on the 100 ft road in Indiranagar (just North of the pedestrian over-bridge at the end of the fly-over).

Now, if the process is still under way when you come upon it, what you need to do is detailed in the ESG web-site, which may be accessed here. I have myself followed this a couple of times, and succeeded in limiting the damage considerably.

But, if the damage has already occured, like in the above instance, you could perhaps file a query under the RTI Act, on the lines of the one I am going to be filing pertaining to the instant case, as below, and forward a copy to ESG.

Effect of Metro stations on adjacent roads

Metro RailPublic Transport

The metro work is underway on main roads in most part of Bangalore. The metro stations that are to be constructed are significantly wider than the main track. Will this not create bottlenecks on adjacent roads? For example, there is a metro station being constructed on Old Madras Road near the 80ft road junction. The Old Madras road which is wider on either side of the station suddenly becomes very narrow leading to frequent traffic jams here. Even after the construction of the station, the road width isn't going to change and this can be a serious problem later on. 

Consider the Vijaynagar main road. If the Metro station is constructed near the Bunts Sangha, it will almost be as wide as the road today. How can  the width of the roads be made uniform throughout?

Is this something that BMRCL is thinking of? In addition, the presence of a station will require rickshaw stands and bus stops nearby which means the roads have to be wider in these places. On the contrary, the station makes the road narrower. This is definitely a double whammy. 



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