Infrastructure

With nearly one-third of the world’s population under lockdown, once busy roads and streets are now empty, and public transit ridership as well as train and air travel have dropped significantly. The pandemic has slowed down the use of transportation systems and infrastructures. Under these circumstances, transport infrastructure and services around the world are being modified for reduced demands and to meet COVID-related safety standards. But some cities are going as far as to find entirely new ways to continue using existing transportation infrastructure. Adaptive reuse is the process of converting a building or structure to serve a function other…

Walk past the pedestrian subway adjoining Chennai Central station on Wall Tax Road and you won’t be able to avoid the strong, pungent odor of urine. It appears pedestrians come here to relieve themselves more often than they use the subway to cross the road, according to the subway cleaning staff!    “It’s mostly the autowallahs waiting outside the station who urinate at the entrance of the subway. People only use this subway, when the traffic police stop them from crossing the road by putting up barricades,” said A Kasturi, a government-hired cleaner who also routinely picks up empty liquor bottles from…

The delimitation of BBMP wards is being initiated ahead of the civic polls scheduled this year. On March 2, the Urban Development Department (UDD) notified the draft BBMP delimitation proposal in the gazette. With delimitation, ward boundaries will be redrawn so that the population of each ward will be nearly equal, at 42,645 on average. Objections/suggestions to this notification, can be submitted, along with with reasons, in writing to the Deputy Commissioner, Bengaluru Urban District, Bengaluru, by 16 March 2020. The idea behind delimitation is to reduce the huge disparity in population among wards. Currently the population in outer wards…

First mooted in 2002, the Pune Metro is finally ready for launch in 2020. Being built by the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, the inauguration of Pune metro’s first line from Tukaram Nagar to Phugewadi is scheduled for April. This stretch, part of the Pimpri-Chinchwad to Swargate Line-1 is set to be functional by March 2020, according to union minister Prakash Javadekar. Javadekar also claimed that all three lines of the metro are likely to be functional by 2022. These claims, however, were refuted by the MahaMetro, the special purpose vehicle set up to build and run the Pune metro. “The…

There is nothing intelligent about Bhopal’s Intelligent Traffic Management System (ITMS), introduced in June 2018 at a cost of Rs 17 crore. A project under Bhopal’s smart city initiatives, the ITMS is meant to regulate Bhopal's traffic and bring traffic violators to book. But the rising number of new vehicles, poor road conditions and a total lack of civic sense among the city’s rapidly growing population, have rendered the system meaningless. Erring motorists and two-wheeler riders have blithely ignored the many e-challans they have received for traffic violations like traffic light violation, over speeding, no helmets and triple riding. (Total…

Translated by Sandhya Raju " கிண்டியிலிருந்து சென்ட்ரல் (12 கி.மீ. தூரம்) செல்ல ஒன்றரை மணி நேரம் முன்னதாகவே கிளம்பினேன், ஆனாலும் கொச்சின் செல்லும் ரயிலை தவறவிட்டேன். சென்ட்ரல் எதிரே உள்ள பாலத்தில் என் வண்டி இருபது நிமிடங்கள் மேலாக நெரிசலில் சிக்கியது. போர்டர் உதவி கொண்டு ரயிலை பிடிக்க வேகமாக ஓடினேன்.  வாகன நெரிசலால், இந்த சாலையை கடப்பதும் அவ்வளவு எளிதல்ல," என்கிறார் வர்த்தக ஆலோசகராக பணி புரியும் கிருத்திகா நாயர். இதுவே இரண்டு ஆண்டுகளுக்கு முன்னால் 50 நிமிடம் முன்னதாக கிளம்பியிருந்தாலே அவர் நேரத்திற்கு சென்றடைந்திருப்பார். கிருத்திகா போல் பலருக்கும், இந்த நெரிசல் இடர்பாடுகளையே தந்துள்ளது. பூந்தமல்லி சாலை மற்றும் அண்ணா சாலை வழியாக சென்ட்ரல் செல்லும் வாகனங்கள் ஊர்ந்து செல்லும் நிலையிலேயே உள்ளன. ராஜீவ் காந்தி அரசு மருத்துவமனை அருகே உள்ள பகுதி தான் சென்னையிலேயே மிகவும் போக்குவரத்து நெரிசலான பகுதி; அரை கி.மீ தூரம்…

Jyoti Aware, a municipal school teacher came to Mumbai in 2009 and since then has been staying in a rented house in Mumbai's northern suburb of Kandivali with her husband and two pre-teen children. Two years back, she purchased a house in Mira Road, a suburb outside Mumbai for Rs 30 lakh, since that was the only place where she could afford a house. However, she could not shift to the new house for that would increase her commute time four times, besides making it difficult for her children to continue in the same school. "The new house is far,…

Jyoti Aware, a municipal school teacher came to Mumbai in 2009 and since then has been staying in a rented house in Mumbai's northern suburb of Kandivali with her husband and two pre-teen children. Two years back, she purchased a house in Mira Road, a suburb outside Mumbai for Rs 30 lakh, since that was the only place where she could afford a house. However, she could not shift to the new house for that would increase her commute time four times, besides making it difficult for her children to continue in the same school. "The new house is far,…

“Chennai Airport incurred a loss of Rs 4 crore last financial year due to a multitude of reasons,” said C V Deepak, General Manager, Finance and the former Officiating Airport Director, Airport Authority of India (AAI), Chennai International Airport. In this exclusive interview, C V Deepak talks about ways to make the airport profitable and about crucial infrastructure projects such as multi-level parking, construction of a new terminal and the second airport.  Where do we stand in regard to the construction of the second airport? There have been media reports about the government zeroing on a site at Parandur in…

During the solar eclipse on December 26, the solar power generated in Karnataka dropped sharply for an hour. At the time, over 18% of the state’s power demand was being met through solar energy. Currently, the Bangalore Metropolitan Area Zone (BMAZ) draws around 20% of the state’s energy. Given this, much of Bengaluru’s energy demand can potentially be accommodated by solar power alone (Bengaluru gets power from the same grid that supplies to the entire state). With the commercial operation of the world’s largest solar park (2050 MW) at Pavagada in Tumkur district recently, Karnataka now has the highest capacity…