thumb_up 0

COMMENTS

Or some similar policy push to encourage planting of trees? Some possibilities

• 10 trees on your front side road setback, you get 0.5 bonus FAR
• Commercial/office buildings with x trees / sqft builtup area get energy rebate
• Road/Rail/Office/Apartment builders get a 5% bonus/money back, or 1 year property tax rebate if they put two trees for every tree they end up uprooting for their development work
• Any entity other than BMTC buying buses or vans must by hybrid vehicles or the ones that run on less polluting fuel (gas, bio-deisel)

Pushing for policy changes like above should give us the pounds. Fighting for 6-7 stretches of roads and rails is like fighting for pennies.

Instead of fighting a project at such late stage, wish we worked to make the environmental clearance process a lot more transparent, because if we had gotten our voices there (early in the project planning process), we would not be seen in negative light by pro-development-at-any-cost lobby (which outnumbers us tree lovers, I believe that) as the Metro opponents are seen today.

I love Nanda Theater Road (RV Road, or 4th main, this road has so many names), and will certainly love to save those trees. But

• Fighting every other project with trees as the cause has to have some method that can help people draw the line and criteria to justify and pick the projects to oppose
• As I said above, the energy spent by activists to fight at late stage on selective projects via PIL etc is perhaps going to be spent better and more effectively by fighting for transparent environmental clearance process and pushing for green policy changes with city civic bodies.

Hope I made some sense.

• thumb_up Like
• · login or register to post comments

The Metro extension in the South could have included a re-alignment as follows:

After Jayanagar station (near old Nanda theatre), it could have turned west & again turned south to proceed along Kanakapura road, straight past Banashankari temple towards Puttenahalli. If this were done, the beautiful avenue with shady trees from Nanda to the southern end of the road could have been saved & left intact. Catchment will also improve since some parts of Banashankari-east will be covered.

Taking the route all the way along Nanda road, past Jayanagar station was quite unnecessary as catchment areas are somewhat lean after Jayanagar station.

It is still not too late to re-work this alignment as physical works are yet to begin on RV road.

• thumb_up Like
• · login or register to post comments

However, I do not belive than there is NO space in bangalore for more trees

I remember during my trip to southampton, UK last Feb, they had earmarked a whole block of industries near downtown to be destroyed and converted to parks. While they are creating space we are destroying our CA sites to build apartments.

We are picking on adhoc targets. The metro etc are planned developments which will help us keep the environment free of cars. Why dont we look at design of our existing layouts and make space for trees? Our layouts are famous for cramming people. Have we made provisions in our recently widened streets for Trees and pedestrians? I left in october when work on Bellary road was still on. I bet if I look today there would be no trees planted there and no ped sidewalk along the way. I hope I am wrong.

• thumb_up Like
• · login or register to post comments

Hi, Just joined the group out of the fact that it pains me to see the lack of planning in our dear town. Just heard from a friend in Banashankari that not just the RV Road trees but the entire Lakshmana Rao Udyana (along either side of the road) are going to be consumed by the metro. I scanned the entire Namma Metro site for some info, but got none. Don't know if this is true. I agree that we are a bit late in getting our act together, but is not late better than never? Any ideas on what we could potentially do to minimize the damage? If some of the members of the group take a trip down to UVCE / SJ Polytechnic circle, you can see how traumatic this entire construction is going to be. An older example is of course the Central Jail on the same road. Bye Sivaramakrishnan.

• thumb_up Like
• · login or register to post comments

Blrsri...

I too love trees. Nothing in bangalore is better than the few tree lined avenues when they are in full bloom!

But to me, the metro is inevitable. We need it badly. And unfortunatelt, however it is aligned a trees will go. Howevere depressing this maybe I somehow belive it is the only solution to the mess.

However, I do not belive than there is NO space in bangalore for more trees. For every tree felled in Bangalore, I can easily find 2 spots to plant a new one. Look at the divider on IRR - opposite DELL. Its wide enought to have rain trees. But instead we have errected empty, horrid advertsiing boxes that consume huge amounts of electricity.

Why not make it madatory for every new house/apartment/comm building that is being errected to have a tree atleast in their compound? There are sooooo many places in the city we can plant trees but we have no desire to develop those. Yes, it does take 15 years for atre to grow, but we could start now!

Also, from what I have heart/read bangalore has a very rocky terrain. Tunneling underground is not only expensive but will also require blasting - which can affect people around the area. Which is the main reason why the metro is elevated.

Narayan Gopalan
User Interaction Designer
Bangalore

• thumb_up Like
• · login or register to post comments