BIA is shoddy: Yeddyurappa

I read this report in today's TOI as well.  Apparently he saw all the airports in the US and realized that BIAL is not upto his standards.

I am glad he looked around in the US.  If he had spent a bit more time looking beyond airports, he would also found that the quality of governance there would also be superior.  The roads, the interstates would also be superior.  Local revenue offices would not send people running from pillar to post for every khata transfer and other documents. 

So he would do well to set his house in order before making uncharitable comments.  The government still has not finished putting lights for the full stretch of the highway from Hebbal to BIAL exit.  He if I am not mistaken was part of the government that finally got BIAL going and could have held BIAL accountable to better standards.

Anyway - politicians are known for their double talk.  See his letter to BIAL on the completion of 100 days. 

He has also patted himself on the back enough and made claims that he has fulfilled 90% of his promises.

Srivathsa

I am sure he would have noticed the roads and traffic there as well. I hope he is taking BBMP and other authorities to task

Mr. Yeddi is commenting on a Private Project easily. Agreed that it is not to the world class standards, but, OK for Indian standards.

Did he make the same statement about departments of State Government in comparison with US operations which is under his control? What change has he done. Did his Government maintain the prices of KSRTC/BMTC like what Lalloo di d for Railways? Did his Government rescued us from Power Cutdowns? Did his Government rescued Bangalore from flooding?  List is endless.

Easy to comment on others without looking into oneself. 

 

I completely disagree with the CM.

Check out my BIAL 6th Sep visit report

-----------------------

Regards

Devesh R. Agarwal

Visit my aviation blog at http://aviation.deveshagarwal.com

 

Shoddy may be a harsh word, but even the most balanced of us on this forum would agree that we would have been happier with a showcase of an airport. Their problem is that they picked a natural lighting based energy conserving design, and that's not visually appealing to most. Restrooms, crowded feel near the gates, no fancy facades at main entrance hall - these are the sources of that disappointment IMHO.

But the operations seem to be smoother, and gotten better. Anyway, Devesh has a much better 100-day report on BIAL, so let me not go there.

Also, Yeddy is comparing BIA to airports abroad, not in India as the original post says above. Don't say that he should look at the station, government etc and then talk about BIAL. Those are hard things to fix, not possible to do in 100 days. But its valid to have higher expectations from an airpot built by (an almost) private party.

Not sucking up to Yeddy or anything. But having seen some of this (what they say, and what gets reported), we shouldn't get carried away by the selective sound-bytes that appear in main-stream media.

However, yeah, love BIAL like many of us do, but please keep the pressure up. Remember, they have 2 more terminals and one more runway to build.

Its very easy for the CM to say that BIAL, a private venture, is shoddy - but what about the numerous public ventures that the government has taken pride in. For example, the magic box underpasses and overpasses - while effective - are awfully constructed. I really wonder how long they will last. Already the road in the Cauvery Junction underpass is in shambles and the road over the BDA junction is caving in. The much touted Malleswaram underpass is not really complete - on either side it still looks like a construction site - but I think it has been declared open. So if anything the work done by the BBMP should be criticized first - after all, that is in his hands. I havent been to BIAL as yet but from all accounts it is functioning well. Perhaps its not much to look at - but if it works efficiently and smoothly I will be very happy - and it looks like that is the case.

... could once again be a media spin. Mr Mohandas Pai would have said something off the record, and that is possibly getting reported as "Infy said this". Personal comments - like how he said Bangalore economy could go down by 20% due to this distant airport" (don't remember verbatim) - are personal, not Infy's.

I think that when coining headlines, media goes by selling power. NRN, Nilekani, Infy, Kris, ..., Mohandas Pai - thats perhaps the order. So depending on who says what, you may or may not see Infy in the headlines.

Just the 2 cents, since this has already become a free and loose thread :)

First on Mohandas Pai of Infosys.

a. He gets this platform to spout his views because he is the CFO of INFY. VVR, the fearless leader of a 20-people company in the backwater of IT Land will have nary a microphone thrust in front of his mug.

b. Pai did not whisper his comments into someone's ears at a private party. This was no chance remark. This is at least the second time that he has expressed his views in public on this issue. He is front and center in this campaign and there is no doubt that he wants to be heard by the public.

c. We will not know for sure whether he said that the Bangalore economy will decline by 20% but it was reported in early July that he thought it will decline by 5-10%. Things must be getting difficult by the day at INFY. I am sure an outstanding manager like Pai would have modeled this to the nth degree but what I would give right ear to understand is how a 800-Rupee and 90-minute cab ride to the airport will hurt an economy that has withstood the onslaught of $300/night hotel rooms, $2000 airtickets to and from N.America, huge productivity loss due to poor civic infrastructure etc. etc. Either there really is a problem or he is making up stuff. In either case, there is something black in the lentil, as they say. It could be just loose talk coming from a respected gent.

Speaking of loose talk, I would not be as easy on Yeddy as you. It could simply be political grandstanding or as mentioned here a simpler matter of SMS. In either case the message that he sending out could easily be misinterpreted by future investors. Between the utterances of Mr. BSY and Mr. Pai, there appear to be the makings of a self-fulfilling prophecy. If that happens, it would be sad. We don't want the only difference between Kolkota and Bangalore to be the weather.

In my short life in Bangalore, I have only experienced a handful of institutions that deliver value predictably and consistently and BIAL is one of them. If BIAL is shoddy, I will gladly settle for shoddy roads, shoddy water supply, shoddy garbage collection, shoddy electricity -- you get the point.

My anit-mainstream media bias made me write that, these guys (Yeddy, Pai) aren't doing lose talk here.

That Mr Pai would be looking at 800 Rs per airport trip, and 90 minute cab rides - I get that too. The impact on economy could well be 5% here. This is probably the number he said back July. In that sense, a distant airport, whether it looks sexy or not, does nothing but add costs to Bangalore's IT companies, espacially the ones located as far as E-City.

It could be that we heard them loud and clear only since March this year. They may have veen opposing the airport for loner time than that.

Its not the cost of the trip, but rather the loss of productivity in terms of time. Many companies in the EC, Jigani, Bommasandra corridor, even down JP Nagar, are facing a problem. Their business partners face a 2.5 hr plus cab/car ride, EACH way. Thats 5 hours out of even a stretched out 14 hour work day or 36%.

The Electronics City industries are not fools to have contributed big bucks for the BETL. Heavy traffic all over the city lowers the productivity of the city. If your company staff spend 1.5 hours in traffic each way, and put in a total of 9 hours a day, they still think they are working 12 hours. i.e. a 25% loss of productivity. You do the arithmetic and figure out what the economy is loosing.

Not that I fully agree with the "techies". The same people who whine about Bangalore, are willing to spend 1 hour in each direction on Hwy 101 in the Bay Area or on 405 in SoCal.

And I am not limiting myself to BIAL traffic. Thanks to BIAL location, the traffic on Sankey Road has gone from 1.2 lakh vehicles per day to 1.7 lakh vehicles per day. All that traffic is being funneled through Raj Bhavan road onwards.

As predicted by the Operations Research Society of India, the traffic in that corridor has doubled. It has created a major headache for people who have to commute or visit anything north / west of Minsk Square. On any given evening, one does not know whether it will take 15~20 minutes to go from Minsk Square to Basaveshwara Circle or will it take 1 hour. I have experienced the 45 mins to 1 hour too many times already. It is already having negative effects on the businesses along that corridor.

Bangalore, and most of India is not a major transit location that demands a large centralised airport which facilitates flight to flight connectivity. BIAL officials admitted to me that less than 10% (i.e. 5% in each direction) of TOTAL traffic is transit. Even after KF sets up Bangalore as one of its hubs. Instead the diverse nature of the passengers demand the need for multiple smaller (relatively speaking) airports.

Professor Richard De Neufville is an internationally renowned airport and air transport expert, at MIT. In fact his design manuals are part of BIAL library.

A quote from his paper on Secondary airports "Until recently, multi-airport systems were predominantly a feature of metropolitan areas with the highest levels of originating traffic. Simply put, only the highest levels of locally originating traffic economically justified the existence of second or third airports serving substantial traffic. (Note that high levels of transfer traffic do not promote multi-airport systems, since transfer passengers want to have their connections at the airport at which they arrive. This is a reason that Atlanta only has one commercially significant airport.) Exceptions to this rule have been few; mostly associated with situations such as Buenos Aires in which the primary airport was incapable of handling international or intercontinental traffic, and thus a second airport with longer, wider runways was necessary."

Incidentally, Buenos Aires has a situation just like what I am suggesting for Bangalore, and what  is already sucessfully operating in Brazil (both Rio and Sao Paulo). The city's air traffic expanded byond the capacity of the existing in-city airport so a large international + domestic airport was constructed outside the city. Unlike Bangalore, the in-city airport was kept open (or re-opened following public pressure), and today both airports in each city are functioning sucessfully. If countries in our same economic group of BRIC and Argentina are doing this, why do we need to compare ourselves with Europe which has primarily transit traffic and a pre-existing good public transport network.

Check out some of his airport papers. http://ardent.mit.edu/air.... In particular "Multi Airport Systems in the Era of No-Frills Airlines" (http://ardent.mit.edu/air...)  and "The Future of Secondary Airports : Nodes of a parallel air transport network" (http://ardent.mit.edu/air...). They will make some very interesting reading. If nothing else, help you pass the time, on one of your many commutes to and from BIAL :)

and lastly VVR, Mohan has risen to a position by lots of hard work, imagination, perseverance and, yes, may be some good luck. Media might go to him today, becuase of his position, but I knew him 25 years ago, when we were both part of Rotaract, and even then, he was a well balanced thinker, today even more so. He is very committed to a variety of causes and very focussed on the productivity, whether of Infy, or Bangalore, or India. You have to meet Mohandas Pai and experience the person he is.

-----------------------

Regards

Devesh R. Agarwal

Visit my aviation blog at http://aviation.deveshagarwal.com

The thing about orderly traffic & defensive driving is there arent too many people who make your 1 hour drive to 1.5 hours but cutting in, going on the wrong side, breaking the smooth flow at junctions. The worst I have seen especiially on 210 is driving on the shoulder as soon as you sight your exit about 4, 5 car lengths down. By jutting your nose in front of my car you and I both will take longer to get out of the mess. by blocking the oncoming traffic and trying to cut into in front, you and I both take ages to clear the junction. This is the productivity loss by disorderly traffic. 101, 405, 880, 210, 110 they are all true driving time which points to a lack of contriol on private vehicles, but we arent there yet and our public transport is far better than a BART or MUNI. we need to optimize our drive time and flow. OpExcellence is the word

Idontspam,

One more point - BIAL has stuck to the artistic renditions it showed us at the begining. So why we couldnt bring out our comments then, when it was possible to change I cannot understand. But only after the entire money has been spend we want to give them our opinions. Its quite absurd.

Now, again Metro, hasnt been constructed yet so there is still scope for change. But the the question - how do we strike the balance between aesthetics and functionality - and which do we prefer over the other for the Metro?

Devesh,

 W.r.t your quote "Its not the cost of the trip, but rather the loss of productivity in terms of time. Many companies in the EC, Jigani, Bommasandra corridor, even down JP Nagar, are facing a problem. Their business partners face a 2.5 hr plus cab/car ride, EACH way. Thats 5 hours out of even a stretched out 14 hour work day or 36%."

 Out of this 2.5 hr cab drive , how much is that spend on reaching NH7?

 

I do not mean any disrespect. But I do sense disingenuousness on his part. Even Mr NRN who I would gladly induct into my pantheon of gods, has been known now and then to indulge in double talk (e.g. several years ago, he made a statement about the social responsibility of IT companies to pay corporate taxes while his company was a beneficiary of a tax-holiday regime; more recently he lamented the fact that the IT industry is sucking all other engineering fields dry while his own INFY was offering 35K starting salaries to fresh Civil Engg. grads coming out of top schools).

Even gods have known to be duplicitous, as we all know.

I am skeptical about the claims that business in the Bangalore area will decline by anywhere from 5 to 30% (going by different sources, rumors and innuendos) because of BIAL. Bangalore-based businesses (led by Mr Mohan Pai's INFY) have responded to the ballooning cost of doing business here (e.g. payroll which accounts for perhaps a third to half of revenues is increasing at an average of 10-25%) by going up the value chain. So, I find it incredulous that they (especially those on the cutting edge of technology) would be stymied enough by a 1600-Rupee, 3-hour round-trip to the airport (taken on an average once a month per employee) to suffer such a severe decline in business.

I am with you when you say that it is productivity that costs Bangalore. Beyond that we diverge completely on the root causes. While you point to the connectivity to BIAL, I think about the several hundreds of thousands of IT and other workers who spend an average of 1.5-3 hours everyday on the road in conditions that render them unsuitable to pursue any serious intellectual activity (I think there is a huge difference between spending 45 minutes on 101 between Palo Alto and SFO and an hour and a half between Vijay Nagar and Ulsoor on non-roads -- the latter experience will make any human end up like a wet noodle).  So, tackling the commute of the 5K  air travellers a day is attacking the 3rd or the 4th bar on the Pareto chart when it comes to productivity.   

• Born Bangalorean - love Bangalore and I want to see what I can do for the city in particular and our state to make it a better place.

I cudnt agree with you more on that - I too am Bangalore, by birth and generation and would love to see my city unfold into a better place!

To me personally, BIAL isnt UnAesthetical - its minimilistic rather than grand and I quite like that.Considering there is a Aeropolis coming up and a million other buildings competing for skyline around it, I think soon the whole area would evolve into a more visulaly stimulating area. I feel in such a case, a functional airport would be a huge advantage considering the growth rate. Its a quiestion of Form Vs Function.

Of course we do kep saying why not make it both. Unfortuantely we are constrained by budget and time to not being able to implement both to thier ultimate limits, hence we compromise on one.  After all, Aesthetics are opinions and you are never going to be in a win-win situation.

Now w.r.t BMRC, what worries more is what they are doing by showing us somehting just to get us excited then shelve the idea. Thats like showing a child a candy and then givng him boiled veggies! Its like tricking you slyly....not a nice feeling.

As a city, such big projects I personally dont feel need to be eye catching landmarks. They must be ergonomical, useful, good quality and can definately break away from the government stereotype building look. The building can be built in the same timeframe and budget, with some intelligent use of materials, use of local talent to add the final coating of beauty (Murals, art.....etc).

IMPHO (my personal humble opinion) the city has its landmarks coming up anyway by private and govt bodies, and we need to tone it down a bit so we dont over kill it on the concrete, glass and aluco bond and give it some breating space!

Devesh,

Not knowing Mr Pai of INFY, I'm not going to comment about his bona-fides. However, I find his comments rather curious.

OK I'll grant him that the commute time to BIAL costs Bangalore in terms of productivity. How about the daily commute to work for thousands of his own employees? Is he suggesting that the commute to BIAL costs more? If that is the case, I’d like to get a whiff of whatever he’s smoking. BTW, there are plenty of not-so-vocal businessmen who do not live in or near E-city and have had to endure similar commute times to the old HAL airport. While I’m no fan of the current location of BIAL, I firmly believe its time to move on and make BIAL the best it can be.

On a similar note, I wish our esteemed C.M. Mr. BSY would focus on getting his own house in order, fix the miserable infrastructure, and make a serious dent in the rampant corruption that pervades all of government.

I sincerely hope this article is fact-based and true. I believe HAL would be much better off with such a focus.

http://www.livemint.com/2008/09/0415...r-civ.html?d=1

--amaku

Government plans are understood to be well on their way towards slimming AAI's responsibilities.

...

Separating air navigation from overall airport management would not come a day too soon. This was recommended by the Naresh Chandra panel

...

The ministry asked consultancy firm KPMG to suggest the way forward. It recommended: Taking air navigation away from AAI.

 Syed it would probably take 1:45 to 2 hours. But the gist of my statement was prductivity loss due to the long commute, and its resultant impact on businesses in the southern part of Bangalore.

If we had to spend more money to open a second airport, I too would question the wisdom. Here I am questioning the closing of existing infrastructure.

-----------------------

Regards

Devesh R. Agarwal

Visit my aviation blog at http://aviation.deveshagarwal.com

 

 IDS, fully agree with your thoughts. However, traffic discipline starts at home, and like it or not, the Bangalore Police needs to get aggressive on enforcement. See the traffic seminar thread.

I love seeing statements from senior Police officials. They all have these multi-year, multi-crore mega project boondoggles. If you observe, enforcement is NEVER mentioned.

In the duration of those multi-year, they would have completed their stint, and transferred, or retired.

I cannot blame them fully. The whole "hafta" racket involves politicians as well. It is so deeply entrenched that any officer attempting to take it on, will loose his post in a jiffy.

I have suggested N number of times to Mr. Praveen Sood, to empower the volunteer wardens to report traffic violations and force the police to issue tickets. He will get 3000 volunteers within the first 15 days, and his revenues will baloon to the point he can hire another full complement of police force.

He cannot implement my idea.

-----------------------

Regards

Devesh R. Agarwal

Visit my aviation blog at http://aviation.deveshagarwal.com

 

In any PPP, the ONUS is on the public representtaive/partner to see that the partneship results in value addition and meets the objectives.

Syed, sometimes, the public representatives do not have the power, sometimes their will is thwarted, and sometimes they do not have the will.

Just using BIAL as an example. GoI and GoK together have 5 directors on the board. Siemens itself, has 5 directors. So the public reps are outvoted.

We all know how netas function, and sometimes they are influenced to function. Most PPP projects have bureacrats as the public reps. It is easy for the neta to issue instructions to them.

Sometimes, the bureaucrat does not have the desired domain knowledge. Lets face it. As knowledgeable as Chief Secretary or the Infrastructure secretary are, they are not specialists in airports. But they are 2 of the 5 directors from government side.

We really do not know what is happening in the board meetings. Under RTI can we request for minutes of the meetings ?

And talking about objectives. This is precisely what Mr. Jadhav was talking about. Public needs are dynamic. Private consortium wants the original objective to remain static. BIAL is a classic case of the needs changing during the construction of the project itself, forget the earlier planning, tendering, and negotiation time.

It goes back to our criticism of government failing to provide for the needs of Bangalore. This is a classic case of dynamic needs. When I move to a given locality, I have done it based on the situation at that moment in time. But, later as my needs change, I expect government to meet them.

What mechanism do we put in place to address this conflict of dynamic and static. I think that is a far greater challenge.

-----------------------

Regards

Devesh R. Agarwal

Visit my aviation blog at http://aviation.deveshagarwal.com

http://aviation.deveshaga...

Back in June, I led a high level delegation of industries on a visit of the air cargo facilities run by Menzies Aviation Bobba Group, and Air India Singapore Airport Terminal Services at Bengaluru International Airport. (Read that article).

We observed that the Indian Customs Authority did not have a full presence at BIAL airport, despite earlier assurances to Industry in March 2008. To correct the situation, the Bangalore Chamber of Industry and Commerce (BCIC), made a representation to the local Customs office as well as to the Chairman of the Central Board of Excise and Customs to correct the lacuna.

The Chamber received the following letter from Customs recently, and it is self explanatory.

OFFICE OF THE COMMISSIONER OF CUSTOMS,
CENTRAL REVENUES BUILDING, QUEEN’S ROAD, BANGALORE – 560001.

TRADE FACILITY No. 47/2008
Dated: 11/09/2008

Sub: Shifting of the Operations to the Air Cargo Complex at Devenahalli. Reg

Kind attention of the Importers, Exporters, Custom House Agents and all the concerned with the trade is hereby invited to the necessity of shifting the operations (Assessment, Bonds, Audit, Service Centre, Bank, etc.) to the Air Cargo Complex at Devenahalli, which are at present carried out from the old Air Cargo Complex premises near HAL Airport.

In this Connection, the trade is hereby informed that all such operations will be transferred to the new premises in a phased manner by middle of next month. To begin with, the Service Centre operations will be gradually shifted. All the major operations from the Service Centre will be available only from the new premises from 18th of September, 2008. Only two terminals will be made available at the old premises for facilitating Query reply and amendments. Hence, all the concerned are hereby advised to gradually shift their operations including payment of duty to the new Air Cargo Complex at Devanahalli accordingly.

Assessment and all other official functions currently operated from the old premises near HAL Airport are likely to be shifted to the new Air Cargo Complex at Devanahalli by the middle of next month.

A.K. KAUSHAL
COMMISSIONER OF CUSTOMS

-----------------------

Regards

Devesh R. Agarwal

Visit my aviation blog at http://aviation.deveshagarwal.com

 

I found a map on the ATC space above India. Would you/anyone be able to let me know where I can get a more recent verisonb - or this (2005) the most recent available?

 

Devesh,

I completely agree with you wrt full utilization of infrastructure. Our disagreement is with what would constitute optimal usage of that infratructure.

 

Let's try and look at the two options logically:

1. Reopen HAL airport for civilian use

Pros:

· Central in-city location

· Competition for BIAL

· Reduced commute time to airport (& loss in productivity) for employers in & around e-city

· Offers choice to air travellers, first city in India to blaze the two-airport trail

Cons:

· BIAL expansion unlikely to happen or will at least be delayed

· Connectivity to BIAL will not improve (no pressure on govt.)

· Development around north Bangalore will slow down

· Bangalore will have two passable (at best) airports

2. Return HAL to its original purpose

Pros:

· Civilian aircraft development – a long stated goal of HAL

· MRO facility for airlines – a long stated goal of HAL

· More distributed growth & development across the city

· Govt. will be forced (hopefully) to address connectivity issues

· BIAL will be forced (public pressure & built-in incentives) to address all its shortcomings.

Cons:

· BIAL ‘monopoly’ continues

· Productivity loss for IT, BPO employers in & around e-city

· Lcation – outside the city

 

I’m personally convinced that option 2 will contribute significantly more to the overall growth of Bangalore, and more importantly, to the betterment of her citizens

--amaku

From my experience in flying domestic out from BIAL, I find that after you clear security check, the airport suddenly becomes cramped. Before that, there is plenty of space.

Looks to me like there is a lot of empty space in front of security check, on the mezzanine floor, that can be better used, i.e. move the securiy check booths forward so that space becomes available inside the departure lounge.

Also, if that big round shop in  the middle of domestic departure can be ripped up and thrown away, that will simply open up the departure lounge dramatically! But, BIAL will loose revenue, which means they will increase UDF I guess?

 Of course, the best way to increase space on the mezzanine will be to extend the whole mezzanine forward to overhang the checkin lines below. That means intrusive civil construction. This may be better than building a new, "low cost" terminal.

I have an idea to stop BIAL bashing.

The trouble is with the name. The name "BIAL" commands no respect from anybody. Change the name to "Dr. Rajkumar International Airport" and watch the tide turn!

Can anyone, least of all an elected representative of Kannadigas, dare abuse the airport after that? No Sir, no way.