[Posting this on behalf of Ritesh who filed the RTI]
Attached with this blog is the response from SWR to the RTI queries posed on Commuter Rail for Bengaluru. If you have any further questions based on this response, leave them as comments here so we can include them in the next RTI to SWR.
Friends, here is the Call to Action report on Commuter Rail service for Bengaluru authored by Namma Railu project team members. Report is attached in full, and will be used for discussions at the Namma Railu - Mobilicity event at CiSTUP, IISc (scheduled for Aug 30).
There is air space available above all railway stations in Bangalore. What if some stations can be utilized as a source of income by the PPP or SPV operating Commuter Rail Service in Bangalore? What would the numbers look like? Tried doing some, and came close to Rs 2000 Crores per year. Here are the calculations for everyone to poke holes and correct.
The below figures should speak for itself. Except for the line from Mysore towards Chennai via city & Tumkur, all other lines around Bangalore are single track. I cant think of any other major city (even tier 2 towns) which is in such a pathetic situation?
Agenda: Update on commuter rail event and preparations. Preview of Report we have prepared.
Venue: YH1 Commuter train
Date: Saturday, 31 July
These days I am in search of information on working of Special Purpose Vehicle. In this pursuit I have come across many pieces of info available on Internet.
Sanjeev, IDS, PS Anantharam sir and myself went over to IISc today to meet head of CiSTUP. Short summary on how it went
We are thinking end of August for this Commuter Rail / Namma Railu seminar. Keep watching for mroe updates, or join in if you want to help organize this.
A hard copy of the report is available now, contact IDS or anyone from the Namma Railu project team if you want to see it. Wll upload the soft copy here as well as part of work for this seminar at CiSTUP.
Lets go Namma Railu :)
Here is an overview of the Praja Report on CRS, titled "Namma Railu".
Decongestion of Bengaluru is a burning issue facing the administrators today. With the kind of visibility Bengaluru has in the international arena and the role India is going to play in the world of the future, it is important for both central and state governments to sit up and take notice. Ignoring the long term mass transport needs of the city can backfire on the country. The economy of any city thrives on availability of good quality labor at affordable cost. Expensive housing and increased travel times only put more pressure on productivity of human capital. This may ultimately lead to flight of capital and hurt the economy with cascading effect.
Want to share with all that I have tried several times to contact Mr Madhu for a meeting to share our now-ready CRS report with him. Have sent emails to his, and his PA's office, at least 5 emails. Have made at least 3 calls to his office as well. The person at other end, on one occasion, carried a chit for him while he was in the middle of a meeting.
Some of us took half day leaves from our work to meet him that day. We started on this report after our meeting with him, where during the meeting, he asked us to come back with a report summarizing our thoughts and suggestions. Now that the report is ready, and people have spent serious time putting it together, its only fair to expect him to at least accept the report.
He just got additional responsibilities, so its likely that he is busy with increased work load. We will try reach him again this week, email as well as phone, and in case there is no response yet again, we will assume that he didn't really expect us to complete it when he suggested that we prepare a written report.
The challenge for India is to write a new chapter in low-cost urban development, the way it has done in wireless telephony and automobiles (Nano) writes Subir Roy
Why did I post this under Commuter Rail? Because it ties in very well with what we are trying to say. Commuter rail infrastructure costs afraction of the fortune we spend today as most of it is already available. Incremental investment in mordenization of signaling and operations is all that is required to make it efficient. If one picked the cities identified in this report, connect them to Bangalore and did all that the author is trying to say, we can have a world class ecosystem up and running in no time.5 years tops.
Is the govt listening? Are the bearucrats up to it?
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