Come, join us- Human Chain @Lalbagh on Apr 17, 6pm opposing Illegal Metro Construction in Lalbagh

[vinay_ks]

Save Lalbagh, Save Nanda Road, Save Bangalore’s future

Joing the Protest against the illegal construction of Metro in Lalbagh

Friday, Apr 17, 6pm, R. V. Road (at Lalbagh West Gate)

Earlier this week (April 13-14), the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation (BMRCL) demolished over 500 feet of Lalbagh's wall and cut down trees inside Lalbagh

Comments

[vinay_ks]

Dear Subhi,

We are not saying put a full-stop to the Metro :-)

We are saying you need to have public consultations before you decide routes etc. Once there is a public consultation, then we might gbet different options - underground, alternate route etc. A project of this magnitude cannot be done without public consultaions.

We had filed a PIL in court(in 2005) asking for the same, and we did get a judgment last month , asking BMRCL, BBMP, BDA to follow the Karnataka town and country planning act.This law requires planning and implementation authorities to evolve urban projects by consulting the wide public in many stages. It further demands a detailed process of enquiry into social, economic and environmental impacts of projects and requires that implementing agencies develop schemes transparently by making public plans before undertaking any project.

Also, when you say the metro will remove a lot of cars off the road, im not too sure. Consider these facts -

Phase 1 of Metro it will carry only 10 lakh passengers (12%) of Greater Bangalore’s population in 2012 (to get a sense of how bad it is - The BMTC already carries 38 lakh passengers daily, as of TODAY).

And after Phase 2 of metro is completed,in 2021,spending 16,000 crores, it will carry only 16 lakh passengers, probably around 15% of Bangalore's population . So the remaining 85% - do we think they will all be in buses/cycles/on foot only? I dont think so :-)

[subhi]

"Also, when you say the metro will remove a lot of cars off the road, im not too sure. Consider these facts "

Delhi metro did a lot of research on this-
http://www.delhimetrorail.com/corporates/ecofriendly.html

The overall impact is the same in Blore.
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Also, at this stage of the metro construction there will be a huge economic\environmental impact for revamping the entire construction plan.

In my opinion, a more useful channeling of energies would be to get metro to allocate a portion of the budget to plant more trees and to maintain them.

[jace]

If Bangalore had Delhi's management, this would be a very different city. Unfortunately, we don't. Bangalore does not have an independent government like Delhi does. We're run by a government elected by the rest of Karnataka and which caters to them.

Central Bangalore today has a fairly smooth traffic flow pattern thanks to the well thought out system of one-ways. This is not true for the rest of the city. Outer areas are connected to the core through just ten arterial roads (the same ten served by BMTC's Big10 bus network). Some of these outer areas, like Jayanagar and JP Nagar, have a well-laid out grid pattern that nicely distributes most of the traffic. The rest are isolated localities attached to their arterial roads with no other access to the city centre. Connections between these localities are in the form of winding, irregular width roads formed more out of necessity than planning.

I've lived and suffered a decade of bad traffic on Bannerghatta Road that has consistently gotten worse because every incremental improvement to the road quality is offset by population growth, and because poorly planned infrastructure projects like at Dairy Circle and BTM Layout dragged on for years, leaving motorists with no alternative roads at all. These two are settled now, but the new choke points are at Bilekhalli and Arekere, and there isn't even a hint of a viable alternative approach path (the two that exist on either side of BG Road will get choked even faster).

An overhead Metro will effectively be a permanent choke on the road's traffic carrying ability. Even if it does take out some traffic, this city's growth rate will not ease up. Roads below the Metro line will choke up again, roads will have to be widened again, and because land acquisition is so painful, the government will take the easy path of just doing away with pedestrian sidewalks and public parks.

[vinay_ks]

why go to delhi..Have a look at the EIA report of Bangalore metro - www.bmrcl.co.in . It says a total of 412 trees will be felled ALL over the city for the metro. and now they themselves say 323 trees will go on Nanda road alone and that 250 trees are already cut elsewhere. they already exceeded that they said.the EIA is a sham.

and i agree with jace when he says -
"An overhead Metro will effectively be a permanent choke on the road's traffic carrying ability. Even if it does take out some traffic, this city's growth rate will not ease up. Roads below the Metro line will choke up again, roads will have to be widened again, and because land acquisition is so painful, the government will take the easy path of just doing away with pedestrian sidewalks and public parks."

[kingsly]

You can't compare the impact of the two..

Bangalore metro Phase 1 is a total of 33kms and only 6.76kms will be underground. and has a planned construction time of 4 years.

(Delhi metro's phase 1 was twice as big 65kms and 13kms underground and took the same amount of time.)

Namma Metro doesn't connect ITPL or Electronics City which is where the bulk of the car traffic is probably headed.(It also doesn't touch a most of north/north east/south/south east bangalore either)

Namma Metro has only one point of interconnect at Majestic. To go from any place on the other line you'll need to switch trains at Majestic. So people might not be all that keen on taking the metro if they have to switch lines. Since they'll be able to get to the destination faster by a direct route.