Transmogrifier's blog

Improving traffic flow on Residency Rd

25 June 2011 - 3:31am — Transmogrifier

The issue of traffic management in general and road-widening in particular touches on a particularly raw nerve for most of us. That the issue polarizes most, is evident even from recent discussions right here on Praja.

High petrol prices - 59% levies in Bangalore, where does it all go?

7 July 2010 - 10:25am — Transmogrifier

[Promoting Transmogrifier's comment to a separate 'crowdsourcing' post - we need to know what is happening to the various taxes and cess that makes petrol so expensive for us. 59% of fuel price is levies, where is it all going today? Do share if you know.]

@ PublicAgenda, while conspiracy theorists make for good movie-making, it's time (like many here are suggesting) that we look at why we pay so much as in the way of levies (59%?) and much worse, get so little. Let's take two examples:

1. In one of the most capitalistic of societies, federal and state taxes, on average, are about 45.6c/gallon (for petrol) or 16.7% at today's price of unleaded petrol. What do you get for that? For 18.4c out of that (or 6-7%) you get 75,000 km of Interstate system on which you could cover 950km (that's the distance to Chennai... and back...and then back again) in 9.5hrs.

Rethinking road-widening - Tunnels?

22 June 2010 - 6:31am — Transmogrifier

One of the core infrastructural issues we are facing is an inability of our arterial roads and highways to provide rapid cross-town access. Globally, city and highway planners recognize and create different infrastructure for highways and city roads. See Dr. Joglekar’s posts here for a succinct description of this problem plaguing most Indian cities. A simple schematic (full size image here)and an inventory of city highways reveals the problem.

Thru Highways:

NH7 (in blue)
NH4 (in red)

Terminal Highways:

"Signal free" Hosur Road: opportunity or nightmare?

5 February 2009 - 12:05pm — Transmogrifier

Just caught this in the news; BBMP's plans to convert Hosur road to a Bellary road like "signal free" stretch (read more here).

This is another series of traffic engineering nightmares just waiting to happen (narrow underpasses, plain bad design, non-existent pedestrian infrastructure). Ironically, they actually have cited Bellary Road as the model to emulate. There must be some way to get in on this and at least attempt to get things done more holistically. RTI the design plans? Another meet with BBMP? Two things that I could immediately think of:

BMTC Big 10 and HOHO service: work in progess?

2 February 2009 - 8:33am — Transmogrifier

BMTC is prepping 140 buses ready for ABIDe's Big 10 proposal in addition to suggesting Volvos be used for the HOHO service. Does this mean that BMTC will remove/reduce current bus services operating on the 'Big 10' ?

A solution for eastbound OMR/ORR lanes

20 January 2009 - 10:33am — Transmogrifier

The mess at Bennigannahalli is a 2 km microcosm of what haphazard (if any) planning can result in- apathy (and sometimes antipathy) to public transportation, lane indiscipline, poor forethought (narrow RUB; non-existent pedestrian infrastructure) and bad design (Cable-stayed bridge) to name a few. However IMO some solutions are not that far away.

Access to the Byappanahalli TTMC

27 November 2008 - 2:14am — Transmogrifier

From Praja_posts

The success of the planned Byappanahalli TTMC and all the opportunities it offers as an inter-modal hub (KSRTC, BMTC, Namma Metro) will be determined by ease of access.

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