Another foreign jaunt to solve traffic woes : This time Paris solutions

Another foreign jaunt to solve traffic woes : This time Paris solutions
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: While, Bangaloreans are worrying about crumbling infrastructure and unending traffic woes, netas and babus are busy traveling around the world in search of quick fix solution to this problem. However, none of these ‘study tours’ have helped the Government to make some positive change as all the reports were gathering dust in government offices.

The latest one was Transport Minister N Chaluvarayaswamy’s France sojourn that just returned to the city, after studying the multi-modal transport system in Paris for 14 days and to find solutions to State’s transport system, especially Bangalore.

In fact, this was the fourth foreign junket, undertaken by state officials in just one and half years to study the traffic management system there and find out solutions for problems faced back home.

This time the team was comprised of Transport Principal Secretary D Thangraj, Commissioner Narayan Gowda and KSRTC Environmental Officer Anand Rao.

According to the Government sources, France tour burnt the State exchequer kitty of around Rs 15 lakh, but the final bill is yet to be known. Nevertheless, the problem with the study team was that not a single traffic expert or engineer had accompanied it, devoid of the point whether the team found solutions or not. This has been evident last year also.

Last year, the then Home Minister Mallikarjun Kharge took three foreign tours to various countries such as Sweden, Italy, Brazil, Japan and China with same purpose.

Kharge’s study team included the then Transport Principal Secretary B L Sridhar and Transport Commissioner Om Prakash. Interestingly, even before Kharge made an attempt to implement the new projects, he was out of power.

Subsequently, both Sridhar and Omprakash were also shunted out from their posts.

Though earlier study tour reports are gathering dust in the government shelves, one has to wait and see whether Paris solutions would help to problems faced by Bangalore.