Infrastructure

The construction of an elevated rail line on a 5-kilometre stretch between Velachery and St Thomas Mount began in 2000, as part of the Mass Rapid Transit System’s (MRTS) extension project in Chennai. While the MRTS lines between Beach to Mylapore and Mylapore to Velachery have been operational for many years, the line between Velachery and St Thomas Mount that passes through Puzhudhivakkam and Adambakkam has been delayed forever. The primary reason for the delay was litigation related to the land acquisition of a 500-metre stretch between Jeeva Nagar and St Thomas Mount. With the litigation ending nearly a year…

Land is scarce in Mumbai. The island city to the south, an island only in name, is surrounded by the sea on all but one side. Towards the north, it is bordered by the neighbouring city of Thane. With such space constraints, to accommodate a population of 12 million, there is only one-way housing can go, and that is up.  How much housing can be built is thus less determined by land than by the amount of floor space, multiplied when the number of floors in a building reaches greater heights. This is controlled by the Floor Space Index, or FSI,…

Nobody wants 2022 to pull a 2015 on Chennai. Each monsoon since the infamous Chennai floods has been a reminder of the devastation that rains can cause to the city. Last year's rains were an eye-opener that the city's flood management still leaves a lot to be desired. The civic body is working frantically to complete the stormwater drain work in Chennai this year before the onset of the monsoon. Since March 2022, the Greater Chennai Corporation has been carrying out desilting existing stormwater drains and building new ones in areas with no drains or damaged ones. The question in…

"Currently, district or city-level disaster management departments are predominantly concerned with rescue and recovery, rather than resilience and preparedness, which is what they have to focus on," says Jaya Dhindaw, Program Director of Integrated Urban Development, Planning and Resilience at World Resources Institute, India. Masterplans for the city are made for longer spans but cities develop at a much faster pace in comparison to these planning processes, researchers say. "The National Disaster Management Authority (NDMA) does not have the agency to make plans for cities," says Garima Jain, Gilbert White fellow at the Arizona State University, who works closely with…

Acquiring private land and property for major infrastructure projects like the Bengaluru metro has always been controversial. Especially the amount and manner of compensation to those whose land/property is acquired. Various laws and court verdicts have laid down norms for such acquisition. But the Bengaluru Metro Rail Corporation (BMRCL) has drafted its own rules on this issue, as it speeds up work on Phase 2, or what it calls the Blue Line, a 57-km stretch that connects Central Silk Board to Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) via KR Puram. Slated to be completed in 2024, this project linking the Outer Ring…

During monsoons, road infrastructure in Mumbai becomes a nightmare. Potholed roads are seasonal and don’t fail to appear after the first shower. Just before the monsoon set in this year, the Western Express Highway, SV Road and other major roads seemed to be in a better state, creating an illusion that they would survive the season. Within a few days of rains, craters and potholes appeared all over Mumbai. The Twitter timelines of MMRDA and BMC were filled with complaints. Updates by the Traffic Police on traffic snarls on roads across the city. Source: Mumbai Traffic Police, Twitter A distance…

Bengaluru’s Namma Metro has one major advantage. It does not get caught in the city’s notorious traffic jams. The ground reality however is, metro construction is today a major cause of these traffic jams. Which the humble Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) bus does get caught in. At the drawing board stage, the metro was touted as the solution to Bangalore’s two key issues. One, getting private vehicles off the roads, thus reducing traffic congestion and vehicular pollution. Two, as being a much greener, affordable and accessible commute alternative as compared to to other options such as the city bus…

On August 24th, deputy chief minister of Maharashtra Devendra Fadnavis announced that about 17,000 slum dwellers residing around the Mumbai airport would soon be rehabilitated in the Premier Colony buildings at Vidyavihar. The Mumbai Metropolitan Regional Development Authority (MMRDA) would repair and improve the existing tenements to make them habitable for people to live in, he added. The Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA) would later allocate it to slum dwellers occupying the 276 acres of the airport. The purpose was to clear 100 acres of airport land for the expansion of the airport, he explained in his statement in the legislative…

Several years have passed since the Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA) was launched to rehabilitate slum dwellers of Mumbai, and promises of free housing and proper water and sanitation facilities remain unfulfilled.  After facing eviction from their own homes, residents are stuck in rented houses with developers neither completing the project nor paying rent - owed to them - to slum dwellers. Some projects have failed to take off the ground due to reasons such as disputes between co-developers. In other cases, people are stuck in transit camps for years together.  Those who have managed to get houses, claim poor living…

In 1995, the Slum Redevelopment Authority (SRA) scheme was launched to provide free housing for slum dwellers. Twenty-seven years later, the scheme remains stuck in a maze of unkept promises, incomplete projects and poor slum dwellers caught up in rented houses waiting to get their own houses in Mumbai. Urban planners blame the builder-centric approach for the lack of progress on this scheme.  Since its inception, the SRA scheme has built only 2.36 lakh houses. As of date, about 5,20,645 houses are proposed to be built and approvals have been granted to start work on 2,75,942 houses.  The task to…