The adieu to the Majestic bus stand!

srinidhi - 20-APR-2010

"Kempe Gowda or Majestic bus station may soon become history as the government has initiated the process of decentralization of the bus terminals.

Street improvements - Problems aplenty

Naveen - 14-APR-2010

Roads in most Indian cities are a complete mess, literally. When do we see them graduate to some sort of orderliness, if ever ? The reasons for this pathetic state of roads, heavy congestion & poor transport infrastructure are many. Most of us believe that the authorities alone are responsible & lack expertise. However, apart from this, there are many other reasons :

1) City officials are unable to acquire land uniformly throughout a street for maintaining width symmetrically because there are numerous establishments & private parties or individuals that contest such acquisition in courts - army land between Mekhri circle & Rajgopal rd & on ORR on the northwest (near Peenya) are examples, as is the traders agitation along CMH rd.

2) Where roads are of uniform width, 'No Parking' is difficult to enforce or indiscriminate parking is allowed due to the nature of activities on the road, or private vehicles park anyway & usually obstruct movement of traffic - examples are Sampige rd & Margosa rd in Malleswaram, 80ft & 100ft roads in Indiranagar & Koramangala that have numerous retail outlets.

Local Trains vs Circular Rail For Bangalore

Sanjeev - 8-APR-2010

Analysis of  last three months discussion and media briefing by Shri MoS K H Muniyappa and CM Yeddiyurappa  shows  that MoS is favouring Circular Rail and CM is talking of Local Trains similar to Mumbai.

Now we will see one more round of study by SWR / Railways for Circular Railway and wasting time on this. RITES study on  Local Trains is not considered by MoS K H Muniyappa and no one is talking of this.

Do any one have the details on Circular Rail what MoS K H Muniyappa is talking.  We from Praja need  to do some serious work so that both proposal Local Trains and Circular Train services are sanctioned for Bangalore.

Town Planning –Principles Summary

psaram42 - 3-APR-2010

 Town planning principles are age old. Sir Patrick Geddes (1854-1932) who visited Bangalore in his days, classified the towns in three main categories depending on three stages of development:- 

1. Primary
2. Secondary
3. Tertiary 

Here is a Lewis Mum ford book  “The city in history: its origins, its transformations, and its prospects” review :- 

Bus stands on the outskirts to decongest traffic

muthusubs - 2-APR-2010

 Building bus stands on the outskirts of a city is a concept which has been widely developed throughout Tamil Nadu. None of the inter-state buses today enter the interiors of towns like Madurai, Tirunelveli, Dharmapuri and even Chennai has its bus stand quite far away from the main city centre though the city has expanded beyond the present bus stand.

Mysore Road - Choke Point 1 - Guddadahalli Junction

Srivatsava - 2-APR-2010

The BBMP has propsed that the stretch from Sirsi Circle to Gali Anjaneya Temple on Mysore Road be widened. This involves chopping trees all along the stretch. These are already well-known plans from the news reports and praja discussions. There are a couple of estimates on the number of trees to be chopped some saying 50 and some 100+. But, lets not be get into the numbers. Whats important is to find ways to solve the bottleneck without chopping the trees, if any available.

Mysore Road starts from KR Market. Vehicles zip across from Town hall on the flyover for about 2.5 kms, pass over the Sirsi Circle, and get struck at the ramp of the flyover. Why ? There is a choke point immediately after the flyover (about 150mts away).

Bangalore Master Plan 2015 - Where is this headed?

deepak_here - 31-MAR-2010

I have read the Bangalore Master Plan 2015 for the first time.

I am happy to see the recommendations made after a structured study. ( Though I would have expected this to have more meat)

Can Bangalore ban motorcycles ?

Naveen - 31-MAR-2010

At some stage soon, auto-rickshaws & motorcycles will have to be banned or atleast, confined to city's outskirts to streamline traffic within the congested CBDs of Indian cities. Bangalore, with it's relatively richer citizens can perhaps lead the way in this!

A case study report, full of good explanatory maps & photos by Karl Fjellstrom, ITDP (dtd 15-Sep-2008) about how motorcycles were banned in a span of about 16 years can be downloaded from this link on filesanywhere.

Excerpts from this report are worth looking at (especially, the section "Lessons from Guangzhou’s successful motorcycle ban") in relation to our own future needs :

Gradual implementation

BMTC Issues - From RCA perspective - 3

Bheema.Upadhyaya - 30-MAR-2010

Few of the points mentioned in the survey  (in second set) is about bus stands/stops. 

1) Dirty and sad bus stands, do not like waiting there

2) Very hard to walk to and from the Bus Stands

We shall through some light on these items from RCA perspective.

Effect : Do not like waiting there. 

Causes: 

1) No adequate shelter(sad bus stands)

      - Damaged roofing

      - No roofing

 2) Poor furniture

   - Demolishing in progress

   - Repair

   - Damaged or vandalized

   - Unclean and not usable

   - Sharp edges or broken edges

   - Very old

   - No disabled friendly furnitures/path

3) Not Clean due to

     - Spitting (Pan and simple)

the train and civil society ..an analogy

vmenon - 30-MAR-2010

The train and civil society –an analogy