Calcutta is poised to travel light

Buddhadeb Bhattacharjee

The Delhi Government has identified five modules of public transport system for the Capital. According to Economic Survey of Delhi 2008-09, it has identified Monorail, Metro, Bus Rapid Transit System, Integrated Rail Bus Transport and Light Rail Transport (LRT) system as the components of a multi-model transit system.

As work on the Noida corridor is almost on the verge of culmination, the Noida Authority has announced a budget of Rs 5,038 crore for the Light Rail Transit System to be extended upto Greater Noida.

Tribune News Service
Noida, January 18

Noida and Greater Noida are likely to be connected by light rail transport system by the end of this year. The light rail is likely to start from Sector-32, the last station on Metro route in Noida.

Having seen the Metro in Delhi and Kolkata, the urban rail network in Mumbai and Chennai, the Bangalorean had always wondered why the City's existing railway llines weren't put to better use. After all, Bangalore had about a dozen railway stations criss-crossing the City...

Sindh Chief Minister Syed Qaim Ali Shah has said that the existing $800million ADB-funded mega city project will be redesigned and improved with the inclusion of mass transit schemes such as a light rail, costing Rs2.4 billion, to provide a solution to traffic congestion in the city for the next few decades. This was one of the salient features of the budget 2008-09, said the chief minister while addressing the post-budget press conference on the seventh floor of the New Sindh Secretariat on Tuesday.

The Bus Rapid Transit corridor

It's a battle of the bulge in major cities of Uttar Pradesh. Be it Agra, or the more sedate towns of Aligarh and Meerut, the Manchester of the East Kanpur or pilgrims' delight Varanasi and Allahabad or the industrialised hub of the state, Ghaziabad-it has spread everywhere. The mounting pressure of the population is pushing the edges to these towns to their margins. This, coupled with the crumbling edifice of the urban infrastructure, is adding to the worry lines of town planners when they sit down to plan and visualise these cities two decades from now.

It's not just the average Delhiite, even those involved in the project are slowly getting disillusioned by the bus rapid transit (BRT) system and are worried about its success rate. For officials who are in the transport department, the prospect of other project like tramways is also bleak. "The BRT is a complete failure. The BRT does not contribute to capacity building at all rather it adds to the mess thereby slowing traffic. It should not have been brought to existence at all. The concept should have been studied in detail before its implementation.

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