Its a bird! Its a plane! Its BMP on fanciful flight

Roads in the air: City’s flight from chaos
Deccan Herald

These elevated expressways are stand-alone projects without any conflict with other transport options like Metro Rail and Inner Core Ring Road that are being planned for the City.

An elevated expressway from Raj Bhavan to Hebbal flyover junction and six other such expressways, are being actively considered to ease traffic congestion in Bangalore City.

These elevated expressways are stand-alone projects without any conflict with other transport options like Metro Rail and Inner Core Ring Road that are being planned for the City.

A meeting of the City Infrastructure Review Committee, chaired by Chief Secretary B K Das, on Wednesday set up a panel to carry forward the proposals on these elevated expressways.

The new panel — comprising BMTC MD Upendra Tripathy, ACP (Traffic and Security) M N Reddy, Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BMP) Chief Engineer (Projects) A M Ranganath and member of the Empowered Committee on Infrastructure R K Mishra — is expected finalise the other expressway routes in the next two weeks.

In their entirety, these expressways will traverse the North-South traffic corridor (Wheeler Road to Outer Ring Road junction, Banashankari) and East-West traffic corridor (Marathahalli to Hebbal) of the City with entry and exit points at select locations.

According to sources, stretches from Whitefield to Trinity Circle (M G Road) junction and Sholay Circle to Hosur Road are likely to be the among the other expressway routes.

These expressways are billed to be taken up wholly on DBOOT basis (Design Build Own Operate and Transfer) and the BMP shall call global tenders for executing the same. No cost estimates have been worked out on these projects yet and they are based wholly on the practical feasibility study by the Infrastructure Development Corporation of Karnataka (iDeCK).

The iDeCK study has reportedly identified seven corridors where the elevated expressways may be located. The study has taken into account the traffic projection until the year 2015, sources said.

According to Chief Secretary Das, these expressways are distinct from the projects like the Inner Core Ring Road which the BMP proposes to take up through the assistance under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JN-NURM).

Pvt-public clash

Meanwhile, Wednesday’s closed door meeting, it is understood, witnessed differences of opinion between the private industry and the civic agencies, especially the BMP, over the issue of public-private partnership projects on infrastructure.

During a media briefing, the Chief Secretary did not mince words on the role of the private sector in upgrading City infrastructure.

The private entrepreneurs have been “extremely irresponsible”, he said on the industry’s alleged reluctance to implement tasks like footpath upgradation after having come forward on their own.

“They have been thinking of themselves only, instead of being constructive,” he said on the excuses like cost factor and additional civil works being cited by the industry in its reservations over the partnership.