Namma Railu
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Need for Suburban/Commuter Rail for Bengaluru makes to Railway Budget Speech in Parliament
This is how the railway minister, Shri. Sadananda Gowda describes in his maiden railway budget speech,
"..Madam Speaker, as you are aware, Bengaluru with bustling, business activity attracts large commuters from surrounding rural areas and towns necessitating better connectivity of Bengaluru City with its suburban areas and hinterland. Study to Explore Possibility of enhancing the existing IR network of Bengaluru for meeting the above need will be taken up. In addition, to cater to the demand of Passenger Traffic in Bengaluru area, Byyappanahalli will be developed as a coaching terminal..."
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A petition with 5000+ signatures was submitted to the Railway Minister in person on June 29th, 2014
http://rail.praja.in
Catch the latest buzz here,
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Discussion on GOK's formal proposal sent to Railways
What NEXT?
The ball is in GOK court now. GOK must start the conversation with Railways to operationalize the SPV and get down to implement the Phase-1A.
How can we make it HAPPEN?
The approval process does take time in normal course of action. However, if GOK specially our Chief Minister can take up this personally with the Union Railway Minister, there is a real chance for early approval to the project. We all can help in that process if each one of us can reach out to our local area MP/MLA and pressurize them take up the issue with both the CM and teh Railway Minister.
Do not have the contact information? Don't worry. Here is the link for post with contact information for all the MPs/MLAs whose constituency fall in the proposed suburban rail network.
Have questions? Email it to "nammarailu@praja.in"
QUICK LINKS on Suburban Rail Project
CRS, Suburban Rail aka Namma Railu is a citizens' campaign led by Praja and supported by citizens' groups like Hasiru Usiru, CONCERN (Student's body at IISc), ITEC, Aid India, & BengaluruONE. It also has the support from government quarters like CiSTUP, DULT and recently RITES via its report
The population of the Bengaluru Urban area grew by 35% in the 1991-2001 decade and by about 47% in the 2001-11 time period. In order to cope with this growth the government has invested heavily. BMTC has added 3500 buses from 2006-07 to early 2011. Huge amounts of money have been invested in upgrading roads, building grade separators, the B-TRAC project and most recently for the Metro rail project which will add 115 kms of mass transit (phase-I and phase II combined) for a total estimated cost of 38,000 crores. However, most experts are in agreement that even with the Metro fully operational, Bengaluru's public transport requirements are going to continue to exceed the combined capacity of BMTC and Namma Metro. Here is where commuter rail comes in.
To read all discussions at Praja on the subject, use following links
All posts in this group
RTI response from SWR on Commuter Rail
[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.
Namma Railu - call to action report authored by Praja.in members
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).
Commuter Rail - Station air space could give 2000 Crores/year
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.
Bangalore region - Track doubling & electrification
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?
Namma Railu Meetup, on the Hosur Train
Agenda: Update on commuter rail event and preparations. Preview of Report we have prepared.
Venue: YH1 Commuter train
Date: Saturday, 31 July
SPV Case Study - Konkan Railway !
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.
Commuter Rail meeting with CiSTUP, went well, summary
Sanjeev, IDS, PS Anantharam sir and myself went over to IISc today to meet head of CiSTUP. Short summary on how it went
- CiSTUP to add their review comments / foreword to the report
- We will jointly organize a roundtable/seminar at IISc/CiSTUP to formally release the report and discuss the subject with relevant government officers and leaders
- Will invite all transportation and investment related departments of Karnataka, railways as well, and also, local MLAs and MPs who have shown interest or tend to attend these.
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 :)
Summary of Praja CRS Report - 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.
No response from Mr Madhu's office
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.
Brownfield incremental cities
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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