City: Bengaluru

The Prime Minister of India had urged people to use public transportation rather than personal vehicles during the Global Mobility Seminar held in September 2018. This would require public transportation to be incentivised and private vehicle ownership/usage to be disincentivised. Public bus transportation in Bengaluru is ailing, with the Bengaluru Metropolitan Transportation Corporation (BMTC) seeking Rs 260 crores from the state government to sustain its existing level of services. Currently the BMTC is running on a loss of Rs 10 for every kilometer that it operates. There have been discussions by the Transport Department to propose a bus fare hike. This…

B.PAC submitted its strong objections to BESCOM’s proposal for increase of electricity tariff for FY-19, during the  Public Hearing held at Karnataka Electricity Regulatory Commission (KERC) office. T.V. Mohandas Pai, Vice President, B.PAC and Archana M V from B.PAC team made the submissions before the commission today during the public hearing conducted by KERC. Following are the highlights of B.PAC’s submissions: BESCOM prayer for Leave of the Commission The tariff proposal by BESCOM for FY 20 by INR 1.01 / unit has been proposed stating a deficit of INR 2933.82 crs for FY 20. B.PAC’s analysis has shown that this…

Namma Bengaluru Awards (NBA) Trust launched the 10th edition ‘Namma Bengaluru Awards 2019’ (NBA) in Bengaluru last week. NBA is a pursuit for Unsung heroes, who have striven to make Bengaluru a better city, braving all odds. These awards are the city’s way of saying ‘Thank You’ to its Real Heroes, who work relentlessly towards making Bengaluru a better place to live in. Owing to the growing popularity of NBA, we have decided to create the Namma Bengaluru Awards trust, that will continue to recognize, honour and celebrate the efforts of the unsung heroes nominated by Bengalureans for their unparalleled…

About 5000 students from 115 private and government schools across the city will either visit traffic police stations or invite the traffic police to their schools through February, to celebrate and express gratitude towards them. CMCA’s 14th Traffic Police Day, the flag-off event of a month-long celebration of the city’s traffic police by children, was held at the Traffic Management Centre on January 28th. P Harishekaran, Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic), traffic constables, and school students were present. CMCA’s Traffic Police Day is designed to foster positive interactions between the traffic police and children. The idea is to introduce children…

Tall fences meet the eyes before one steps into the Sarakki lake premises. Most of the lake is currently dry. One can see the tractors busy removing silt from the lake bed. Walking around the lake can be unpleasant, as there are no walking paths currently and the surface is uneven. Garbage is sprawled across a certain section of the lake, and remnants of burnt garbage is present. Green patches of wetlands in the lake area stand out in the otherwise dry lake. "Birds have already started to come back to the Sarakki lake," says Professor K S Bhat, with a…

Alighting at the BMTC bus stop at Puttenahalli, and walking a few metres ahead, one can see a huge expanse of land – the Yelahanka Puttenahalli lake. The lake is completely dry, and one can't miss three mounds of what were once islands. An open channel runs along the side, carrying sewage. One can see construction work happening - there is a complex concrete structure which looks like a huge tank with several partitions. "Since the 1980s till the early 2000s, I used to regularly pass by this lake and it was a beautiful sight," says Dr K S Sangunni, a…

In an interview with Citizen Matters done in 2016, Rajendra Kumar Mishra, popularly known as R K Mishra, had said that the proposed elevated corridor project would encourage public transport. This was at the height of the public opposition to the proposed Steel flyover where the pros and cons of flyovers were being hotly debated. In the last part of our four part series on the Steel Flyover/ elevated corridor projects, we spoke to Misra, who as a member of the Chief Minister's Vision Group, had batted for the Elevated Corridor Project. Right at the outset, Mishra denied ever being…

Flyover repairs and delayed road-widening The Sirsi Circle flyover, constructed in 1999, was the longest flyover then, running 2.91km. It was repaired at a cost of Rs 2.8 crore, four years ago. Now the BBMP is planning to repair it again at a cost of 4.3 crores. The issue is in the longevity of the project. The material used will make the repair last only for four more years. The government’s plan of building elevated corridors has put the road widening plans in Whitefield and Electronics City to a halt. The proposed plan had been to provide an alternative route between…

https://twitter.com/Dr_RVS/status/1074696228447899650 This tweet from a resident asking the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) if they have planned to kill residents near the Karnataka Development Compost Corporation (KCDC), sums up the despair of the residents over the years who have been residing in the area. A group of 23 petitioners including the Kudlu, Hosapalya, HSR Layout, SomasundaraPalya, Parangipalya( KHHSP) Residents Welfare Association (RWA), have filed a writ petition in the Karnataka High Court in November 2018 demanding the closure of KCDC citing it to be a major source of pollution. The residents have run out of patience with the government. "Filing…

Shetty (name changed), manager at a Bengaluru apartment, dreaded the RWA meeting where he had to get members’ approval for common area electricity bills. RWA members invariably questioned him on the huge bill amounts, but he was unable to justify the bills or identify measures for saving. The association was also unable to take concerted action, mainly because of the lack of data. Usually the association ended up taking ad hoc steps like installing LED lights, and brushes the issue aside. But the problem is revisited every year, with the same results. Upto a quarter of maintenance charges is for…