Bangalore's elevated light rail transit system is mired in red tape

Transportation experts will tell you that a city needs a mass transit system when its population crossed 1 million. By those standards, 35 Indian cities are eligible. Yet, only Kolkata has a small metro system. Chennai's new system-running at only a sixth of capacity because buses serve the same route better and more cheaply-runs over exactly 8.55 km. And only 16 km of Delhi's under-progress mass transit system will be running by 2003.

But Bangalore's Elevated Rail Transit System must surely win some sort of an award for sloth.

The need for a mass transit system was projected as early as 1988, when a World Bank study said that the rate at which the population was growing and the traffic density was increasing, made it imperative for Bangalore to have a mass rapid transit system.

The population of Bangalore then was 3.4 million. Today, its 7.2 million people are served by a grossly inadequate fleet of 1,800 buses and 60,000-strong fleet of smoke-belching autorickshaws. No wonder, then, that Bangalore has the largest personal transport fleet-more than 9 lakh two-wheelers-in the country after Delhi.

It took the Karnataka government five years to set-up a committee to examine whether a mass transit system was needed. Finally in 1993, the Karnataka government decided to build an elevated light rail transit system (ELRTS): a 99-km system of air-conditioned light coaches borne on viaducts on arterial roads. It made sense. Elevated tracks cost Rs 100 crore per km compared to Rs 300 crore per km of underground railway. Surface tracks are cheaper by 25 per cent, but where's the space? ELRTS' total cost, estimated at Rs 4,000 crore in 1994, has ballooned to Rs 10,000 crore. The government-owned Bangalore Mass Rapid Transit System Ltd was set up in 1994. Since 1995, a cess was levied in Karnataka to garner funds, but only Rs 290 crore has been collected over six years.

Chennai's 8.55 km-long mass transit system is struggling

Its not just about money, it's about planning and common sense. Chennai's fledgling mass transit system runs at a sixth of capacity, a ridiculous statistic in a country where buses and trains are always full. That's because buses cover more ground and do it more cheaply than the limited mass transit system in Chennai. The people who built the system, the Indian Railways, didn't think it worth their while to sort out the details with the officials who run the city. Instead of complementing the bus system, the mass transit system competes with it. And since the Railways have invested a lot of money in the system, there's no likelihood of fares-costly to those used to the cheaper buses-coming down. There are no hope of profits in Chennai.

In Bangalore, it was clear from the start that a private partner was needed. Nearly all mass transit systems run at a loss worldwide. In 1996, the UB Group won a global bid. Since then, it's been a litany of delays and disputes. The government and the UB group are presently re-negotiating financial terms. If all goes well, the first trains might start running by 2007 over the first phase of 21 km. As for the second phase of 64 km, no one's even talking about it.

-Venkatesha Babu & Nitya Varadarajan

Commuter Diaries: Days In The Life Of The Traveller

Delhi: Battling For Survival On The Road, Reading Hope In The Signs
It was my first week in Delhi, and I was on my way to office in Connaught Place. It was 9 a.m., and I had to be in before 10, or else join the sack race. I rose at 7 a.m. and was in the bus by 9:10. Middle-income office-goers clerks, secretaries, travel agents joined me on the chartered bus. Almost immediately, the overworked speakers pounded out the latest in Punjabi pop as the conductor pounded on the side of the bus to clear the way ahead. After a week of back-crunching stops and abuses, I had enough. I know there's a ring railway somewhere, but where? The next day, I get on my motorcycle, like 22 lakh others. We weave through the buses and some of the 9 lakh cars. The air is surprisingly clean, thanks to the CNG the buses and autos now imbibe. But driving is getting harder. About 10,000 new vehicles join the daily battle every month, ensuring the once open six-lane roads are medieval jousting grounds.

But every day, I see more men in those yellow hard hats. I see the hope in the signs they place on excavated streets, pavements and parks-they read, Delhi Metro.

-Moinak Mitra

Mumbai: Surviving Crush Hour And Dreaming Of The West Island Freeway.
The blast of the air horn of the 7:59 Churchgate local jars me awake from my standing snooze. I clutch the well-worn iron grip tightly as the train's motors whine their way out of Borivali station. Office goers fling themselves aboard desperately. The next train is five minutes away. But in the mad, frantic rush of the Mumbai commute, these few minutes could mean missing the next of a series of links that makes up an average Mumbaikar's daily grind: The bus from the station, the share-taxi, the car pool, the lift on the collegue's bike-every step is charted with split-second precision. This is a first-class compartment, but I'm squashed in between veterans who've buried their head in papers neatly folded to book-size. I'm one of the five million who spend an average of two hours on the trains. On the roads, 55,000 smoke-belching taxis are stuck in ever-increasing, jams. The humid air is acrid and insufferable. The trains are jammed to four times their capacity, but there's no choice. Yes, I've heard of the West Island Freeway, the roadway that will soar over the western seaboard, and deposit us downtown. We've all heard of it-for the last 20 years.

-Abir Pal

Bangalore: Living My Life Without Fourth Gear
My car has a fifth gear, but I've never used it in Bangalore. Actually, I've rarely got beyond third. Driving a car in Bangalore means competing against the streams of two-wheelers-just one of 9 lakh-that clog the once-empty roads. As I grow older I don't fancy myself doing the weave-of-death astride a scooter or motorcycle. So I drive, slowly, breathing in the foul exhaust of the thousands of vehicles forced on our roads because we have no transport system worth the name. I see school children hanging to life on the footboards of the 1,800 rickety buses, or packed in like sardines in a cycle-rickshaw with a precarious, rusting iron cage on its back. I see the hard-working folk stuck in buses for an hour for a 14-km commute. Of course, we do have flyovers now-exactly two of them. To top it all, I pay more for my petrol than anywhere else in India: I'm contributing my bit to fund the Bangalore light rail elevated system. I've been doing it for six years now, and I'm told I might see the first train by 2007. Which means they might start construction by then. Hurrah! At least my children will be able to use the fifth gear.

Venkatesha Babu

Suburbia's Sprawl And The New Outlying Culture

Salt Lake City, Kolkata: absorbing the swamp of grandma Kolkata

Like everywhere, Indian suburbia strives to better the decaying city, creating its own nuances. ''The suburb has not really thought of itself as outside the city,'' says Dr Radhika Chopra, a sociologist at the Delhi School of Economics. And so India's suburbs have developed into little escapist fantasies, chiefly of the professional and middle classes who've found themselves priced out of the city centres. Yet each city as greatly influenced its suburbia.

Delhi's coveted suburb Gurgaon, she points out, ''has transformed into DLF City getting an urban layering over the rustic gown.'' So Gurgaon is a strange mix of the village and the mall, the Opel and the plowshare. Delhi is built on an imperial theme with the concept of a centre paramount, which its suburbs reciprocate. Gurgaon's centre, they say, is built on hyperspace-sociologists call this the space that is occupied on cultural differences. Hyperspace survives by cannibalising aesthetics, says Chopra. So the Corinthian columns, cafes, and other embellishments borrowed from the city.

Mumbai's suburbs, like Andheri and Borivili, are home not just to a strong working class but also a professional middle class. The suburbs are in a way syncretic to the culture of Mumbai and the strong local train network binds the city and its suburbs in one unit. Mumbai's inner suburbs like Bandra, Juhu, Powai, and Ville Parle are unusual in that they are home to people you would not find in the suburbs in other cities. Many of the super rich-film stars, producers, builders-have made their home here in soaring, ultra-luxury apartments, the likes of which are often not available in the city centre. So there are neo-American complexes-self-contained townships really-with monster Honda motorcycles and Mercedes SLK's cruising down their smooth roads. Outside these townships, built by builders like Lokhandwala and Hiranandani, the chaos of Mumbai reigns supreme.

Kolkata's suburbia is evolving with the marshy Salt Lake encroaching over more marshes to the city's east and north-east. And the typical residents of these expanding marshlands are the retired parents of salaried, non-resident Calcuttans who regularly pump in more greenbacks than Indian currency to see this new Kolkata take wing.

Chennai's chief suburb, Tambaram, is a proper residential area well-connected by the city, particularly by its arterial railway network. It takes a mere 30 minutes to chug your way into Chennai Central. Tambaram has a strong middle-class and professional composition, much like the Mumbai suburbs, and shares its space with a host of manufacturing units.

Bangalore's windswept suburbs are occupied by middle and upper-rung professionals, who work in the shiny new office complexes that have sprung up where there were once rose gardens and coconut groves. Whitefield, once a haven for retired defence officers and the occassional chicken farmer, today houses some of the best known names in the tech business: GE, Wipro, Bell Labs, and Lucent, to name a few. Like Gurgaon, Whitefield is surrendering to gentrification as many of the old farmers are selling out and raking in their windfalls as land prices soar.

Malls. Condominiums. Clubs. Is this the way of the future for India's suburbia? It might look that way, but it's impossible to ignore the 'real' India outside the gates. Life may he hectic and promising for the achievers who flood suburbia. But their world will remain within their gates. Outside, they will be dodging that cow and jarring their suspensions on the rutted outer roads. Like our cities, suburbia's culture will echo all the contradictions of the new India.

-Moinak Mitra