Yet another jaunt to solve our transport woes!

Yet another jaunt to solve our transport woes!
Vijay Times

Bangalore: Do bad roads and poor public transport in your city bother you? Don’t worry. You will be free from such headache soon, with a Japanese ‘solution’ on way.

A high-level team led by Transport Minister Mallikarjuna Kharge is in Japan to study that country’s transport system and management and find a quickfix solution for Karnataka and Bangalore in particular.

In fact, it is the third foreign junket being undertaken by Kharge and co in less than a year.

The team had visited Brazil and Sweden some months ago in search of transport solutions, but possibly did not find anything that could be implemented here. The same team had gone to China and Italy in March this year with the same purpose, but apparently did not find any solution to match the State’s requirements.

Not disheartened, the team is now in Japan. It is expected to return fully armed with details of the solution to the State’s transport problems.

The team comprising Principal Secretary (Transport department) B L Sridhar, Transport Commissioner Om Prakash and Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) MD Upendra Tripathy, left for Japan on Sept 17 and will be returning on Sept 24. According to sources in the secretariat, the Japan visit is likely to cost the State exchequer around Rs 15 lakh. “That will definitely be worth the expenditure, if they can come back with a concrete solution to the infrastructure problems dogging the City,” said a senior citizen. But one small problem is that the team is not accompanied by any traffic experts or engineers.