Bharat Rakshak

So 7 kms in almost 5 years,well, thats much better than 5+ years they took to complete a small overpass on the old airport road, or around 6 years to complete the diary circle overpass.

I don't know of any route between airport and central park,

Oct. 14 (Bloomberg) -- Bangalore, India’s Silicon Valley, will open the first section of a $1.7 billion metro railway next week as the city tackles congestion that has dented investment and made it the world’s second-worst for parking.
A three-car train will run on a 6.7-kilometer (4.2 mile) elevated track on the maiden trip on Oct. 20, according to the Bangalore Metro Rail Corp. The network will stretch to 42 kilometers by 2013.“The metro project will be a game-changer for the city,” said Anshuman Magazine, managing director for South Asia at CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. “The metro should’ve been there before, but it’s still timely.”Bangalore’s population has jumped almost 50 percent in a decade to 9.6 million as a temperate climate and a pool of low- wage software programmers attracted companies such as Infosys Ltd. and International Business Machines Corp. Roads and power systems have struggled to keep up with the pace of growth, creating opportunities for Chennai and Hyderabad to challenge the city’s grip on India’s booming outsourcing sector.Bangalore’s administration “has to show it cares by providing better services like power and transport,” said Vinod K Nowal, president of the Bangalore Chamber of Industry & Commerce, and a director at JSW Steel Ltd. “There are now other states who are more aggressively attracting investments.”
Facebook Inc. last year opened its first India office in Hyderabad, about 570 kilometers north of Bangalore. The Palo Alto, California-based company didn’t immediately respond to e- mailed Bloomberg News questions about its choice of the India office location.

yes maybe a few would be spared (like the kaveri emporium, church property that houses the hard rock cafe, the deccan herald building...) but quite a few are already gone and replaced. the old bombay store is rebuilt as joyallukas jewelers now. kaveri emporium is badly in need of a refurbishment...it has already had one fire and the place is old and full of flammable stuff.

brigade road has kind of lost its luster....lots of cheap t-shirt shops came up as typically happens when a area loses its vitality..... loads of pubs and their shady type clients, a few NRIs wandering around, cigarette smoke, lack of parking ... not really a family friendly place anymore. church street is unkempt with broken pavements , rats ....

the new "high street" is indiranagar 100ft road .. even though it also has lack of parking and 4th world std pavements generally used to park cars in no parking zones.

btw they have done sensible thing and scapped the proposed HSR from MG road to BIAL which would have been a costly white elephant. instead the normal metro will have a line to BIAL just like most cities like delhi do. lots of construction work is already evident from Hebbal to BIAL..it will be elevated all the way. no sign of any work from Hebbal to MG road yet...

I am looking fwd to when the jayanagar and chikpet metro lines open...finally get to park my car in bypanahalli and then prowl these vast areas to explore and look for deals...there's a lot of cool stuff in the bylanes and hidden coves there.

I think, there are two reasons for MG-Brigade area losing its luster. Firstly, the metro construction for 3 years which made the area a complete mess. Secondly, the rise of malls. I am hopeful that the area will regain its luster once the metro is operational.

List of the cities in India trying for metro/mono.

Operating:
1) Kolkata
2) Delhi

U/C (Metro):
1) Mumbai
2) Bengaluru
3) Chennai
4) Jaipur
5) Gurgaon
6) Hyderabad

U/C (Monorail):
1) Mumbai

Proposed (Metro):
1) Kochi
2) Ahmedabad
3) Pune
4) Chandigarh
5) Navi Mumbai
6) Bhopal
7) Lucknow
Ludhiana
9) Kanpur
10) NOIDA
11) Srinagar
12) Jammu
13) Patna
14) Indore
15) Guwahati/Dispur
16) Amritsar

Proposed (Monorail)
1) Chennai
2) Bangalore
3) Trivandrum
4) Coimbatore
5) Madurai
6) Trichy
7) Aizawl

Proposed (Pod taxi)
Gurgaon

With all the new development along the Bellary road corridor north of Hebbal, it makes perfect sense to extend the metro to BIAL. I never understood the rationale behind a high speed line just connecting to the airport. It is not like even 10% of population flies in and out of B'lr daily or even monthly.

Not having Whitefield, electronic city in the alignment for Phase I made no sense either. Maybe they will need to rethink and extend all the way to Hosur (with infrequent service) and the eastern line to Hosakote too. I saw many residential complexes all along that stretch from the old Airport rd (varthur) connecting to Old Madras road.

Phase-III of the Delhi Metro’s rail network, work on which is to commence soon, will see a jump in borrowing from the Japanese government’s aid agency, in line with a rise in the cost of construction.

Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) is under pressure to deliver on a major network expansion, but the cost of construction is set to almost double, to Rs 303 crore a km, for each line in the third phase. While the percentage contribution of Japan International Cooperation Agency (Jica) in funding DMRC’s projects is to decrease from 60 per cent in phase-I to 50 per cent in phase-III, the borrowing in absolute terms is set to jump three-fold, to Rs 17,621 crore.

Phase-III is to add 116 km more to the present 180 km. Jica’s contribution was to come down to 40 per cent of the overall project cost of Rs 35,242 crore (initial estimates). However, it has since agreed to fund half the project cost for the third phase, which becomes operational in 2015. “This comes as a major relief and good news for us. This is an indication of the trust the Japanese government has in DMRC’s repayment capacity and sound project financials,” Mangu Singh, director (works) at DMRC told Business Standard. Singh is also the choice for next chief of DMRC when the veteran incumbent, E Sreedharan, retires as managing director on December 31.

DMRC had constructed a 65-km network in phase-I, with an investment of Rs 10,571 crore. Around 60 per cent of this —Rs 6,342 crore — came from Jica, in the form of long-term debt. Of the rest, 28 per cent was provided by the Union government and the Delhi government as equity. In phase-II, while the overall project cost almost doubled to Rs 19,131 crore, Jica’s contribution came down to 49 per cent (Rs 9,374 crore) and the equity contribution from the government went up to 50 per cent of the total cost.

A major reason for the huge jump in per-km cost of construction from Rs 162 crore in phase-I to Rs 303 crore in phase-III is the ambitious plan to increase the underground component in the network, to avoid land acquisition issues. While the underground component accounted for 20 per cent of route length in phase-I and 27 per cent in phase-II, underground lines would account for around 40 per cent of the rail network in phase-III.

DMRC’s annual outgo to the Japanese government on loan repayment is around Rs 250 crore, around 45 per cent of its total annual income. While this outgo is being met by DMRC on its own, it leaves the company with no funds to provide for depreciation reserves. A government official, who did not want to be named, said in the years to come, the company would have to look for ways to restructure its finances.

Railways invites coach makers from abroad
Probal Basak / Kolkata November 17, 2011, 0:23 IST

Will be first-ever global tender by the railways; bids to be opened in January.

To meet the rising standards of modern urban public transportation systems, Indian Railways has, for the first time, opted for a global tender for Kolkata Metro’s coaches.

According to railway sources, both domestic and international companies have shown interest in producing broad-gauge air-conditioned rakes for the metro rail here.

“The project has evinced interest from Bombardier, BEML and some Japanese players. The bids are expected to be opened in January 2012,” said a railway official. The bidding will take place for 14 air-conditioned rakes (each rake constitutes eight coaches).

^^ One uber-sekular manager at our place was mentioning about why Puja etc is required for metro and it is only because Hindutva BJP is ruling etc leading to maha arguements between the pro and con groups about this!!

With work beginning on Phase III of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, the Central Government has decided to expand the metro network further, and DMRC has already been directed to prepare a detailed project report (DPR) for Phase IV, which is likely to add another 104 km to the metro network, Union Minister for Urban Development Kamal Nath said here on Thursday.

Phase III of the DMRC will be built at a cost of Rs. 35,242 crore, adding another 103 km to the existing metro network in Delhi. Calling it the “largest infrastructure project ever sanctioned in the country,” Mr. Nath said Government is also considering DPRs for extension of the proposed Phase III.

The new routes under consideration include 5.5 km between Dwarka and Najafgarh (Rs. 1,070 crore), 2.7 km between Yamuna Vihar and Shiv Vihar (Rs. 170 crore) and another 11.5 km between Mundka and Bahadurgarh at a cost of Rs. 1,990 crore.

The tentative corridors for the proposed Phase IV include Yamuna Bank to Loni Border (11.97 km), Janakpuri West to Mukundpur (18.74 km), Mukundpur to Dilshad Garden (17.54 km), Kirti Nagar to Dwarka Sector- 28 (18.17 km), Badarpur to Delhi Aerocity (20.79 km), Lajpat Nagar to Madangir (7.33 km) and Azadpur to R. K. Ashram (8.90 km). The DPRs for Phase IV are likely to be ready within the next 18 months.

“DMRC has been asked to conduct detailed surveys for additional lines from Dwarka Sector- 21 to IFFCO Chowk, Shiv Vihar to Mukundpur and Rithala to Bawana,” said Mr. Nath. With completion of the proposed Phase IV by 2021, the Delhi Metro is likely to cover about 440 km, surpassing the London underground, he added.

More than 18 lakh people travel by the Delhi Metro everyday. “By the end of Phase III, which is expected to be completed by 2016, the Delhi Metro would have a total network of 312 km with a total ridership of about 40 lakh passengers per day,” said Mr. Nath.

There are also plans underway to increase the capacity and frequency of trains on the existing Delhi Metro network. “Presently, about 2,500 train trips are performed with 199 trains comprising 922 coaches. Two coaches have been added to 93 trains already, and supply of additional 212 coaches at a total cost of Rs. 1,800 crore is likely to begin in May 2012,” said Mr. Nath.

Use of magnetic levitation, as used in the metro rail system in Korea, could be adopted for the Kochi metro project, said the Union Minister of State for Consumer Affairs, Food and Public Distribution K. V. Thomas.

He said that E. Sreedharan, Managing Director of Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, had suggested the adoption the technology after the DMRC chief visited Korea recently.

Mr. Sreedharan and the Union Minister had detailed discussions on the Kochi metro project, preliminary work on which has got off to an earnest start already. Mr. Thomas said that the Korean adaptation for Kochi of Maglev, in which there are no wheels, would make the metro project cheaper by about 20 per cent and that the system in Korea needed slimmer pillars than what was now being planned for the Kochi metro project.

This would make construction easier in Kochi considering the narrow roads along which most of the metro rail is planned to run.

The Minister also said that at the time of the first proposal for Kochi metro, the Maglev system was considered to be costlier than the conventional wheeled cabs in the metro systems.

However, the system had been improved upon in the Korean example.

Mr. Thomas also said that the State government was pressing the Union government to adopt the Chennai model for Kochi metro project, in which the Centre picked up 50 per cent of the stakes.

However, the Planning Commission was not in favour of such a model, Mr. Thomas said as he pointed out that more discussions with the Planning Commission were expected over the coming days.

I think we should consider privatising ICF.

To replace just our existing 30,000 passenger rakes with modern rakes costing Rs 10 Crore a piece would be Rs 300,000 Crore. $60 Billion. (3years of food security bill ) IR total passenger income ~ Rs 25,000 Crore. IR is essentially broke and can not afford even the RS 60,000 crore to go to LHB rakes which would be a massive massive improvement by themselves.

Sadly the First world is bloody expensive