OPINION

63-year-old Kamalamma (name changed) was peacefully walking with her husband at 5.30 am in a quiet locality in Bengaluru. Little did she know that fate had a terrible plan for her. Two youngsters on a bike sped past them, close enough to brush against her. Her life changed forever! She fell down, hit her head against the curb, and has been bed-ridden for the last 10 years. My dear friend lost her 17-year-old son in a road accident, when he and a friend set off on a bike to wish their friends on a new-year eve. Both of them had…

A few days ago, Tejasvi Surya, MP for Bangalore South, created news when he worked with various stakeholders - BBMP, BWSSB, BMRCL etc - to help clear the mess that was Bannerghatta Road. He coordinated a joint meeting with these departments and relatively eased life for thousands of commuters who use this road. A lot of people were impressed that an MP got down into the grit of solving the basic infrastructure problems that plague our city. But that's just the point here. Dealing with a bad road isn't his job as an MP! Just so we are clear, this…

A major railway station, a Metro station and a national highway (Peenya Road) are all located close to each other in the Yeshwanthpur suburbs. But these transport modes are not well-integrated, causing major hassles in using public transport here. 2.3 km from old railway station to Metro The map below shows the distance from the old entrance of the railway station (marked YPR (OLD)), where Platform 1 is located, to the Metro station. This roundabout stretch is about 2.3 km long. The distance from the new entrance (YPR (NEW)), where Platform 8 is located, to the Metro station is shorter.…

In Part 1 and Part 2 of this series, I looked at the strategic issues and practical issues respectively, in implementing the bus priority lane (BPL) project in Outer Ring Road. In this concluding part of the series, I discuss solutions to these problems: Ban slow-moving vehicles in ORR If a slow-moving vehicle is allowed on the general lanes of ORR, the entire traffic will slow down painfully. Hence BBMP must ban the entry of all slow-moving vehicles in the corridor. This includes hand-pushed carts, pedal-rickshaws and animal-driven vehicles. Do not allow BPL to cross the path of private vehicles…

Bengaluru's bus priority lane (BPL) project was to be launched in Outer Ring Road (ORR) today, but has been postponed yet again. In the first part of this series, I explored issues with respect to the overall strategy of the project. What's also clear is that the BBMP and BMTC have not thought through many practical difficulties in implementing it. Here are some of those: BPL is actually Bus 'BMTC Priority Lane'! Presently the BPL is only for BMTC, and not for other forms of mass transport such as: State transport buses from all states Private intercity (long-distance) buses  Private buses…

Tomorrow, BMTC’s bus priority lane (BPL) will be fully operational on a 27-km stretch of Outer Ring Road (ORR), from Swami Vivekananda Road to Silk Board. The project was to be launched on November 1st, but was postponed to 15th, as BBMP was unable to complete the infrastructure work due to rains. There is much optimism about the project, but it has strategic and planning issues that should have been addressed beforehand. In the first part of this series, I look at the strategic problems around BPL. BPL is not contextualised in terms of the city’s transport needs The project…

Public transport in Bengaluru has deteriorated rapidly. Though the government declares magic bullet schemes such as elevated corridors and bus priority lanes, these pop out of thin air without any city-wide planning for transportation. Rather than jumping to ad-hoc solutions, we should first be clear about the problem. At the core of this is how we measure the performance of our transportation. If any public transport agency wants to win over the public as its customers, it will have to consider the following Key Success Factors (KSFs) for mobility, and find optimum solutions. End-to-end connectivity Pickup within 300 m of…

It was the year 1935, when the idea of widening Race Course Road was being discussed. The project would destroy the guardhouse of one the older buildings 'Poorna Prasad' in the stretch, that was built in memory of the first Diwan of Mysore Mir Miran Purnaiah in 1910. So the-then Diwan of Mysore, Mirza Ismail, decided to translocate the portion that would have to be destroyed, brick-by-brick, to another part of Bengaluru. Today we see it at Lalbagh West Gate entrance. I open with this anecdote, because when the powers-to-be put their mind to protect a city and its history, options…

It has been a season of ideas - some new, some old - for decongesting Bengaluru roads. The #Cycletowork Fridays was the most recent one. Of course the most talked about idea was the bus priority lane announced by the government in an effort to popularise public transport. The fulcrum here was time-saving for road users - we give you dedicated space so you are not stuck in traffic for hours or have to deal with driving stress. However there is another important element that needs to be worked on, to make public transport more attractive - cost. BMTC fares…

The city administration recently resolved to implement bus lanes on the 12 high-density corridors identified by the government in 2016. This brings in some pertinent observations by citizens at large, who are very excited about the project but are also concerned if it would be effective on ground. What is proposed is not Bus Rapid Transit which is a system with its own dedicated tracks, a separate rolling stock of buses, and separate bus stations (if the ticketing systems are different). The 12 high-density corridors are proposed to have bus priority lanes which use the existing road infrastructure and the…