Ideas at Work

There isn't any water left in river Cauvery to draw, for the use of ever-expanding city of Bengaluru. How do we, then, get water to drink? Here is a plan - creating another Cauvery for the city. Matthondu Cauvery Related ArticlesNo Cauvery water, no water problems. But that was thenWhy Cauvery Stage IV water has reached Bangalore, but not your home

There isn't any water left in river Cauvery to draw, for the use of ever-expanding city of Bengaluru. How do we, then, get water to drink? Here is a plan - creating another Cauvery for the city. Matthondu Cauvery Related ArticlesNo Cauvery water, no water problems. But that was thenWhy Cauvery Stage IV water has reached Bangalore, but not your home

"Better than nothing" is not progress. It's just better than nothing. If we set our metrics so low, we can never develop. Take the example of buses. The city needs about 13,000 to 15,000 buses to reach the kind of service levels that are seen in places with excellent bus service globally (1,250 buses per million of population). Also, each year, as the population grows, the fleet strength has to grow by about 200-300. That's the need. The actual fleet strength now is 6,500. And each year, 600 buses are scrapped, so these need to be replaced to keep the…

"Better than nothing" is not progress. It's just better than nothing. If we set our metrics so low, we can never develop. Take the example of buses. The city needs about 13,000 to 15,000 buses to reach the kind of service levels that are seen in places with excellent bus service globally (1,250 buses per million of population). Also, each year, as the population grows, the fleet strength has to grow by about 200-300. That's the need. The actual fleet strength now is 6,500. And each year, 600 buses are scrapped, so these need to be replaced to keep the…

Who has the right to park on the street? For how long? And at what price? These are questions that every city faces, and universally they have come up with some practical ways of answering them. The core of these is that parking cannot be free everywhere. There may be areas where it does not need to be priced, but surely where there is high demand for parking space, it is important to price the use of public space by vehicles. Such pricing, it is assumed, will discipline people into using their vehicles less and wherever they continue to use…

Who has the right to park on the street? For how long? And at what price? These are questions that every city faces, and universally they have come up with some practical ways of answering them. The core of these is that parking cannot be free everywhere. There may be areas where it does not need to be priced, but surely where there is high demand for parking space, it is important to price the use of public space by vehicles. Such pricing, it is assumed, will discipline people into using their vehicles less and wherever they continue to use…

Half the city of Bengaluru travels using 6,500 buses. The other half uses 55 lakh vehicles. This data points so obviously to what we should be doing, but unfortunately, we insist on spending enormous amounts of money supporting private transport, and less than one-tenth of it supporting public transport and sustainable options. The illogic of financing urban mobility is that it is easy to get 30,000 crores for a full Metro system, or 1,000 crores each year endlessly for road-building, but we struggle to get 50 crores a year for footpaths and refuse to spend 200 crores for a Bus…

Half the city of Bengaluru travels using 6,500 buses. The other half uses 55 lakh vehicles. This data points so obviously to what we should be doing, but unfortunately, we insist on spending enormous amounts of money supporting private transport, and less than one-tenth of it supporting public transport and sustainable options. The illogic of financing urban mobility is that it is easy to get 30,000 crores for a full Metro system, or 1,000 crores each year endlessly for road-building, but we struggle to get 50 crores a year for footpaths and refuse to spend 200 crores for a Bus…

Vittal Mallya Road was built about five years ago. When it was built, it was proposed as a higher order of design than the roads that BBMP usually builds. The difference consists of three key elements: a level and continuous footpath ducting of all utilities a concrete surface of uniform width Plus some nice things like better lighting, and a little vegetation. In Tender SURE, most of these became standard, and in BBMP we improved the design by re-doing the way the storm water drains are built. The road cost a lot of money to build. But it was a…

Vittal Mallya Road was built about five years ago. When it was built, it was proposed as a higher order of design than the roads that BBMP usually builds. The difference consists of three key elements: a level and continuous footpath ducting of all utilities a concrete surface of uniform width Plus some nice things like better lighting, and a little vegetation. In Tender SURE, most of these became standard, and in BBMP we improved the design by re-doing the way the storm water drains are built. The road cost a lot of money to build. But it was a…