cvikash has been pioneering these types of ideas here. you can read about his ideas here: http://bangalore.praja.in/blog/cvikash
i like their ideas, especially, their take on speed. urban driving involves a lot more decision making than intra-city travel. and high speeds cannot be safe in such environments.
but for our purposes, i think it is important to understand that paris is a different type of city. it is at a different stage of growth and evolution when compared to bangalore. for example, it already has a certain level of existing infrastructure. 100 years ago it had a wider and longer metro network than bangalore will have in the next 50 years. it now has more than 200 kms of metro and close to 300 stations. based on that paris can think of all these types of next generation or phase II types of ideas. phase I is networks.
bangalore is really an overgrown village in terms of infrastructure. as a city it is in phase 0.5 of growth. we donot even have phase I. iirc, most "arteries", if you can call them that, are overloaded by a factor of 2-3. even if they rationalize fuel prices, impose entry fee in CBD etc etc, existing infra cannot handle the burden. let me not get into planning, sewage and water networks.
for me the take home message from that article, is not the particulars of what they did - the brts, the cycles, the IT based solutions etc... but the political structure in which they were able to implement tough decisions. the story is inspirational for its meta message -- baupin having the attitude, the power, the money and the support of wise expert counsel to be able to stand tall and against the grain. any chance of a subramanya or a jerome measuring up? even if they could, personally, are there any on anybody's rolls in bangalore who have the expertise and the vision to deal with bangalore's problems?
not to mention the systemic issues...
governance and deliverance systems are so poor that it is impossible for people to trust govt on compensation. they cannot even plan an alignment of a road without getting entangeled in political considerations. (what is it, version 5 of PRR alignment?)
add to all this political rhetoric and idealogy laced newspaper editorials and theory peddlers. you cannot cut trees for roads, you cannot cut trees for metro. aquiring land and cutting trees for road widening is frowned upon, but if they are doing the same to cut 30x40, 40x60 sites then it is ok. what nonsense. entire river basins have been sacrificed to make way for 40x60s and nobody batted a lid.
99% of this applies to any random indian city bar dilli.
