What's your vision for Bengaluru?

The ABIDe, i.e. Agenda for Bengaluru Infrastructure and Development Task Force (setup by the current government) is working on a roadmap for development of Bengaluru along with deadlines and regular 100-day monitoring, etc.

The comprehensive reports are available in PDF format on a public website with even discussion forums (although the forums have poor participation).

• ABIDe Agenda
• Plan Bengaluru 2020
• Secure Bengaluru
• Govern Bengaluru
• Urban Poor
• Roads, Traffic Management and Transportation

Comments and suggestions should be sent to abide@abidebengaluru.in .

I’m surprised by the level of openness and invitation for public participation. I’ve heard that all these developments have started due to the initiative of Mr. Rajeev Chandrasekhar, a Rajya Sabha MP. If so, kudos to him!

On the other side, hopefully all those people who spend a significant time everyday cursing the infrastructure and traffic will spend a few minutes to review these reports and contribute suggestions and comments, to get rid of the very same problems.

And the process has already started. The government is launching Kendra Sarige AC buses today, which I think, is to influence people who can afford it to make using these buses more appealing than using their cars:

The Kendra Sarige is a bus service, also called the Hop on Hop off (HOHO) bus service, will run in the central business district only. The route covers the whole area from the Police Housing Corporation, Hosmat Hospital to Trinity Circle.

Almost 20 bus stops in the anti-clockwise manner and around 13 clockwise are planned. Nine air-conditioned Volvo buses will run clockwise and anti-clockwise in this circle itself. The longest trip on this route will take a maximum of 20 minutes.

There will be nine buses running every hour on the route. Bus frequency at the stops varies from three to seven minutes.

And another announcement is the “Big-10 buses” which connect 10 major roads in Bangalore to the outer ring roads, and these buses are going to be on trial for a week to see if it eases congestion.

To sum it up, they are making plans together with reputed citizens in the committee, actively asking for feedback from the public, they are conducting trials and making data-based decisions, and actively launching services. Isn’t this what we all want? If we can dismiss the cynics in us for five minutes, I think we can see all this as very positive steps.

Note on the Kendriya Sarige buses: To see the routes these buses will take, just visit the Bangalore Traffic Information System website.

Note on the Bangalore Traffic Information System / MapUnity : If you have some ideas on how IT / computers can really help traffic, then why you can send these ideas to the MapUnity folks who are doing a kick-ass job. And start/join a carpool while you’re at it – there are just 1676 carpoolers for an IT city of > 50 lakhs! That reminds me of the car vs. bus vs. bicycle photo…