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Rs 25,000 crore worth concrete pillars and bridges to come up
Bangalore to be the ‘train city’ of 21 century
S Praveen Dhaneshkar,Bangalore,Nov 2,Deccan Herald News Service
Picture this! The new Namma Bangalore of the 21st century, a Rs 25,000 crore train City. Hard to believe? Read on.
A 42 km ‘Namma Metro’ will criss-cross the City on a Phase-1, East-West and North-South corridor in September 2012 at a cost exceeding Rs 8,158 crore. A high-speed train at a cost of Rs 5,767 crore will become a reality in 2011-12 to connect the BRV parade grounds to the Bengaluru International Airport on NH-7 on a build-operate-transfer (BOT) basis. A 59 km monorail corridor has been identified to be built at an estimated cost of Rs 12,000 crore, on a public-private-partnership (PPP) within the next three years.
Is the government actually turning the once ‘Garden City’ into a ‘Train City’ of concrete pillars and bridges, where trains will rule the roost at a cost that could well exceed Rs 25,000 crore, all just for public transport. Not to mention the Detailed Project Report (DPR) being currently prepared by Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) for Phase-2 to extend the Namma Metro alignment to include Whitefield, the NICE corridor and Electronic City at costs of well beyond Rs 10,000 crore, taking into account the annual cost escalation of 4 percent.
As per information available with Deccan Herald, the detailed project report (DPR) for Phase-1 of the Bangalore Metro, prepared by DMRC has stated the project costed Rs 3,970 crore, as on April 2003. This, then shot up to Rs 4,989 crore in May 2003 and was again revised/updated to cost Rs 6,296 crore in April 2005. Then BMRCL again revised the estimated cost of completing the project to Rs 8,158 crore in early 2009. This is expected to go up further at 4 percent as per the funding structure. All, this when the powers that be could have implemented a Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS) on a 12.20 km route for the City as per a study done in 1982 at a cost of about Rs 239.15 crore.
Experts also said that the governments of the day also turned a blind-eye to a good feasibility study done in 1983, by an organisation of the Indian Railways suggesting a suburban rail service on existing lines, a circular railway of 57.9 km on two corridors. In Phase-1, a 12.9 km rail link from Rajajinagar to Jayanagar and in Phase-2, a 11.2 km train connectivity from Hudson Circle to Krishnarajapura, that would have been completed at less than Rs 500 cr. Mono Rail Corridors proposed under Swiss Challenge approach
*Equity from Government of India and Karnataka: 15 percent each *Subordinate Debt from GoI and GoK: 10 and 15 percent *Loan from financial institutions: 45 percent of project cost
Lets see when it comes. Our government will ensure that the funds increase 1000% over the initial budget, allocate the funds and then cancel the project. Finally, funds and trains will be missing !!!Is another Koda in the making ?
Anyways, our politicians are supporting the auto drivers ! The auto drivers vote for them and so, maybe it the way to go...
Long Live Bangalore !!!
Train City! LROG - Laughing Rolling on the Ground!
The reporters and politicians should see how the sub-way trains are designed and operated in Newyork and Tokyo; Still preserving Central Park in NY and the a lot of beautiful breathing places in Tokyo!
Some one, sometime back wanted to make Bangalore a "Singapore". Now they are trying to make it "Train City", you mean like a gujri-shed is it? :-)
politicians! only promises. NICE is a nice example of major mess up. Train City, my foot. we cannot get one airport to function properly. Make it auto city it is better.
500 meter underpass takes 2 years to build in Bangalore.. Remember Indiranagar.. The Hosur fly over is being opened from July 2009.. The Nice Road is being built from 15 years... train City.. Rail City I hope one passes over my Grave.. i am sure it will be done by then
Well, as cities grow, it is needless to say that they need to be modernized. I really fail to understand the hue and cry behind this. Yes 50 years ago, Bangalore was the green capital. But what was the population then ? And what is it tdoay ? It has grown exponentially. Every Bangalorean has been sick and tired of the unending snarls and breaks in traffic today. Its taking its toll on every part of life. So if a MEtro comes along, it is definitely going to somewhat help ease this congested traffic. Well, if we want to keep arguing for the heck of it, we can do so. But we need to remind ourselves about the effects of inundating of people into our city. Well, what do the major citites in the world look like - Take London, New York, Sydney, Singapore, Paris, every major country has to grow to keep up its pace. Although I completely sympathise with fellow Bangaloreans for old trees being felled, now hardly anything can be done about it. the plan and the design about this dates back to decades and decades ago which again comes back to the original question . That was sufficient for the population at that time. Today we have outgrown in every possible way. So we need better infrastructure. Yes, creating this infrastructure could have been planned in a much better way may be years ago.. But.. unfortunately the myopic view of the responsible people about growing and modern Bangalore has led to this. Today its a mess out there. Lets hope train services inside the city will ease this
What ever be the govt policy and the legal stand of various agencies, the simple common sense and human sense seem to be grossly missing considering the way the wonderful green canopy of Bangalore is being destroyed slowly and systematically. The brains behind the Metro design needs to be first questioned, whether they understand what it means to fell a 100 year old tree ! This entire concept of "infrastructure development" itself is ill founded and designed to fill a few pockets, than doing good to common man. Just because a handful of motor-vehicle drivers do not understand what "lane system" is, everybody repeats the parrot-talk of "poor infrastructure". I can understand if one complains of quality of road-surface. I do not understand if someone tells me about "narrow-roads". Each road is designed "single-lane-two-way" or "double-lane-one-way" etc. Why do you not understand that one should not fit two vehicles in one lane ? The way vehicles are driven, even if you provide 10-lane road, they will be jammed. Most of the drivers do not understand the difference between "parking" a vehicle and "stopping at a signal" ! They do not know the difference of "Line" and "Lane". Traffic governance should focus and spend money and time on educating and training the drivers. Stop building and widening roads. Instead build light-weight elivated cycling corridors and pedestrian walk ways, with manned elevators to create more emoployment, in a fraction of these 1000s of crores.
Love Bangalore. Very sad to note that this is step towards Mumbaization. Will not be a pretty sight to see more people, more buildings and more garbage around.
All Bangaloreans must strongly unite against apartments coming up in erstwhile peaceful residential localities. Old bungalows get demolished where probably one or two families lived and multistoried apartments come up in the same site. This brings in a crowd of 100+ families on the same road.This is what has lead to the systematic destruction of Bangalore and its peaceful environs.
For every kilometer of rail track, make it mandatory to have atleast say 1000 trees planted and 1x lake cleanedup. We need to showcase that city development and greener city can co-exist and Bangalore can showcase or emulate such examples from other big cities in the world. Infact having more MRTS mean the CO and CO2 emission can be reduced. I feel no harm in having more trains infact we should have circular Underground train services going below the RINGROAD as well, this enables wider coverage and proper usage of space.
I welcome the move, but parallely a concious effort be made to plant more trees to maintain the lung space and greenery of the City.
And wrt many influential people making money, unless people realise paying or giving bribes is not good and government enacting strict laws it is difficult to address this malacide in India. Atleast let us hope for the benefit of common man who takes a long time to travel to benefit from this new transportation method and let the projects be implemented on time.
Bharat mata ki jai.
Stop this stupid propaganda, citizens are now immune to these hollow promises. Every week the incapable babus announce some new project, when it takes more than a few months to asphalt a few 100 mts of prime road this is close to impossible. The only people who benefit are politicians and the contactors. Request media not to give much importance to such false news. citizens should sue the media dn govt for causing mental agony to them!
Agreed, that if the planning and implementation was years ago, we would have saved tons of money. No question that there will be inefficiencies and money making. Finally, the city needs infrastructure. We have a lot of catching up to do.
The real solution to ease the pressure on Bangalore by further developing infrastructure in smaller towns and cities. With better transportation, companies would be willing to locate in other cities thereby easing migration for employment into metropolitan cities like Bangalore.
I am one of die hard kannadiga who loves bangalore and karnataka. Only because of improper plan and Politicians humble for money made this city like this. Nobody is having willingness to contribute to the bangalore and karnataka. Sincere and common people are taking burden of this. Hope people think and involve in building the banaglore with peace and prosperity.
The more expensive these projects turn out, the more profitable it becomes for the politicians. They will make sure they pick the most expensive and most unviable project they can lay their hands on, heck with the destiny of a once beautiful city and its people.
I am saddened by the fact that Bengalooru has completely lost its charm. I am a diehard Kannadiga and a Bengalooru fan, but every I visit I feel that people have become rude, there is no room for courtesy and everywhere you look you see crime, pubs and rash traffic. Nobody cares for anyone here now. I am glad that there are plenty of opportunities, with the advent of software industries, but what happened to peace. There is no regard for anyone. To see that all the old landmarks are being destroyed and new ones coming up everywhere, there seems to be no timetable and accountability to any of these metro and other projects.
Truly ridiculous is what one can say. At the end of all this, a few will make a lot of money and the rest will bear the brunt of poor planning. God save Bangalore!!!
