Citizens: We demand Bread.
Govt: You cant eat bread, Eat Cake! But you cant eat now, you'll need to wait for 4 years,...... well... err... everyone knows nothing's gonna come out of 4 years, so practically, you'll have to wait for another decade....
Citizens: But bread is readily available, why cant we eat that?
Govt: (quiet)
Neutral Observer: There is no big money project in serving bread. Whereas if cake is served, there's lots of money to be made.
Citizens: But what about us?
Govt: Who says we care about you? We only use you for votes!
Is there any part of this that sounds unreal? The state of politics and governance is such a mess, that it is almost surreal...
Not only is the Govt asking us to eat cake, but it wants us to starve for another decade, when bread is readily available? What a Queen Marie-Antoinette moment this is! An apt metaphor for the unfolding Suburban Rail drama...
Bengaluru can have Suburban Rail immediately as explained in this petition. Just that our Politicians & Bureaucrats don't have the imagination. Let them live in Mumbai for a week as commoners, they will understand what Suburban Rail Service really is.
The existing rail network in Bengaluru is severely under-utilised. “A Railway track can handle a train every 3 mins, with automatic signalling & a dedicated control room.” Bengaluru could not only have a Suburban right now on existing network infrastructure, it could have had one 40 years ago or even 100 years ago.
Instead, the Govt offers a white elephant for Rs 16,500 cr. Which will probably take another decade for completion, if at all. This is going the Namma Metro way: instead of establishing a suburban rail service on existing rail network as recommended in the 1983 RITES report, Why waste so much money & TIME, building another monster project with parallel infrastructure, that will increase fares for everyone, be unviable for Govt & destroy environment?
The real causes for Congestion in Bengaluru are:
1) No Unified Transport Authority
2) No Planning
We need an UMTA first, but the Double Engine doesn’t have the imagination to figure that out?
And it goes without saying, that the Unified Transport Authority needs to have capacity in terms of urban and transport planners, and be integrated with or be responsible to the Metropolitan Planning Committee, the authority for the city’s Masterplan, so that the City’s Masterplan has an integrated and Sustainable Transport Plan, based on Land use.
We have been missing all of these milestones for decades. When will Bengaluru wake up to modern planning and administration and governance? When will it really be a Silicon City?
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