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Water supply PPP

13 August 2008 - 11:28am — murali772

Nagpur Municipal Corporation has invited for 'Expression of Interest' for pre-qualification for bidding for its 24x7 City Water Supply Project, on PPP basis. Should Bangalore follow suit?

Through its ad on page 15 Sunday TOI (dt 10/08/08, click on right-side bottom corner at

where's the level playing field?

12 August 2008 - 5:24pm — murali772
BSNL has prime real estate, access to the best spectrum, has been guaranteed priority spectrum for 3G, and by virtue of its state-owned status, will always have a line of sight into spectrum.

Apparently, you can never possibly have a level playing field as long as government player is also in the picture. Is that a satisfactory scenario?

Reproducing the text of the article by Shalini Singh, which appeared in the TOI on 9th Aug, under the caption "BSNL unions question IPO valuation"

Parking for profit, and how we can help

11 August 2008 - 11:19am — silkboard
Traffic

Location, Whitefield. First photo may tell you nothing, whats wrong with parking on the edge of the road anyway. Second one tells you why I clicked it. Blatant, isn't it?

We see examples like this everyday. Some of us fools waste time taking pictures. And the rarest of rare, nut cases, take the trouble of sending these to Traffic Police to feel like doing 'their bit'.

2000 acres for IT park, what about other things?

7 August 2008 - 6:11pm — silkboard
Urban DevelopmentGovernance

I am terribly sorry. But I have an issue with developments like these - new IT park on 2000 acres around the city (source: DH). No, I am not going to speak the beaten line of farmland acquisition. I am not anti development at all, but I speak for us, the urban dwellers who lead close to miserable lives in this city today.

The government is setting up a sprawling IT park on 2,000 acres around the City to create the much-needed space for IT firms to expand their activities.

Wonderful news, and the plans look good. But lets do some maths now.

 

BMTC and Rs 750 crores

7 August 2008 - 5:46pm — silkboard
Public Transport

BMTC has postponed its Rs 750 crore IPO for the time being due to volatile market conditions. But its never too late to look at their plans. BMTC had submitted a Rs 3000 crore plan tothe center under JNNURM to "modernize and expand its network to meet the public transport demands of a growing city.". The plan is (source: Livemint) "to raise money from the public to add luxury buses on newer routes".

50 MW to be restored - but, why was it cut?

6 August 2008 - 4:41pm — murali772
Power

The power situation in the state may improve with the Centre promising to restore supply of 50 MW power, which was earlier reduced from the state's unallocated share and transferred to Andhra Pradesh. Read more at:
http://timesofindia.india...

Namma Raste - road use efficiency

5 August 2008 - 9:39am — silkboard
Traffic

Marathahalli bridge

Read in an email this morning that on 19th July 2008, a workshop on “Reclaiming Bangalore’s roads: Namma Raste” was jointly organized by Environment Support Group (ESG), CIVIC Bangalore and Alternative Law Forum at Vidyadeep, Ulsoor Road, Bangalore.

The context for this meeting was the PIL against BBMP over widening of 91 roads. Apparently, the claim is that the widening projects will increase average vehicle speeds from 8-10 km/hr to 40 km/hr (ref: material from ESG/HU - these should soon be up on ESG website, so I will save myself copy paste jobs here).

Sandalwood helpline

5 August 2008 - 7:34am — murali772

State Forest Department on Saturday launched the awaited 24/7 ‘Sandalwood Helpline Service’. Launching the service, Additional Principal Chief Conservator of Forests (Forest Resource Management) M Muni Reddy said, "This helpline service has been launched as a pilot project in Bangalore and will be extended soon to other vulnerable areas in a phased manner".

Coincidentally, sandalwood came up for discussions on PRAJA just last week at
http://praja.in/bangalore...

in place of Race Course, what?

4 August 2008 - 1:14pm — murali772

What's coming up in the place supposedly being vacated by the Race Course? According to a TOI piece sometime back, underground parking lots will be constructed. However, no mention has been made about the ground level: public space? shops and malls?

Shastri had brought this up in the passing in this comment where he had stated that:

According to this hindu story, there is no mention of an integrated transport hub. Apparently they want to keep the space as a open green space with an underground parking lot

The matter came up for discussion recently in a Yahoogroup, which I thought fit to migrate here

land auction to raise funds for infrastructure development - the right way to go?

4 August 2008 - 11:13am — murali772

The Revenue department is set to begin auctioning valuable government land in and around Bangalore to fulfil Chief Minister B S Yeddyurappas promises in budget 2008-09.

The department officials have already identified 61 acres of government land of various survey numbers spread across all five taluks of the district, for auction as the first installment. "The date of auction will be finalised shortly, and it is expected to fetch around Rs 90 crore," official sources said.



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