Bharat Rakshak

Theo_Fidel wrote:I know we talked about this earlier but there is a special level of density Indian cities operate at. We should call it the 'Indian Urban Super Crush Density'. This particular bust terminus was planned for the next 50 years in 1990 or so. Back then it was way out in the outskirts of town. It is already completely overloaded.

Keep in mind that what you see in the picture below is one of 5 similar bays, 6 if you include the terminus for local buses. It is obviously not enough. Space for 300+ buses is filled just like that, and trust me the way they park there is often well over 300 there. The terminus now finds itself oddly bang in the middle of town next to the 100 feet road which used to be a ring/bypass road. 3 lakh passengers a day. Even a dedicated Metroline will have trouble with that level of passenger flow.

Yet what do we get, Monorail apparently.

The stats are awe-inspiring: the terminus covers 36 acres and has 180 bus bays that can simultaneously station 270 buses.

But, all this is not enough to accommodate the 3,000 buses that touch the terminus daily.

“The terminus has outgrown the facilities. Better planning and proper administration are the need of the hour to deal with the increasing congestion at CMBT,” says civic activist K. Ramdoss.

shaardula wrote:nandakumar, i'm not familiar with details of how buses operate in TN. but in all probability, the drivers have to meet trip times. i know several city wide and state wide corporations that closely track trip times. they dont have an optimizing integer program, but several state corporations do manage to get good through put.

but i can tell you about travel volumes in TN, based on my experiences pre-liberalization days. I used to leave SoKA around evenings. We would reach small B/C towns in NoTN in the middle of the night. You would be amazed at the number of people at 2-3:00 am at small town bus-stands. i have for one have never travelled in a near empty bus in TN. these are small towns like erode and gobichettipalyam. things grow exponentially in bigger cities like salem, kovai and tiruchi.

if you have been to these types of bustands you'll realize that many passengers are on a business/work related trip. Every single passenger prim and properly dressed and out on what looked like a business/work related trip. men and women. they are all trying to reach some place right at dawn, so that they can return back the same day. they all seemed to have luggage which needs to be loaded on top of the bus. one of the key logistic bottlenecks is getting the luggages sorted.

indians in general travel a lot. the amount of traffic in the range of 60-100kms of a town is huge.

rahulm wrote:..........
I found no signage on NDLS for the Airport Express. ............. We should have built this last "mile" access direct from NDLS station.

COMING SOON Air-conditioned rail network that will drastically reduce travel time ( )

An agreement with the three states was signed today (Wednesday). It will be similar to Delhi Metro Rail Corporation.

N AV I N K U M A R urban development secretary
In four years, one can Meerut, Panipat and travel to Meerut, Panipat and Alwar in half the time it takes now from Delhi.

This will be possible through high-speed bullet trains running on dedicated tracks at a maximum speed of 160 km an hour, which is higher than the speed of the Rajdhani Express currently.

One can then reach Meerut in 63 minutes, Alwar in 117 minutes and Panipat in 61 minutes.

At a later stage, 16 towns in the National Capital Region (NCR) will be linked to Delhi through this air-conditioned rail network.

The union urban development ministry on Wednesday signed an agreement with the governments of Uttar Pradesh, Rajasthan and Haryana to create the Regional Rail Transit System (RRTS).

“We are setting up a joint venture company called National Capital Region Transport Corporation (NCRTC) to implement the high-speed rail project. An agreement with the ect. An agreement with the three states was signed today (Wednesday). It will be similar to Delhi Metro Rail Corporation.
Each corridor could be implemented through its subsidiary,“ said Navin Kumar urban development secretary. urban development secretary.

Broad-gauge tracks will be laid in Delhi and its three neighbouring states for this.

This will be the first phase of the RRTS and is expected to become operational by 2015. The feasibility report for the three corridors will be ready by the end of August.

In the second phase there will be five more corridors (see box). “While a majority of the track n Delhi will be underground, in the other states it will be a mix of elevated, on ground and underground. Initially each of the trains will have six coaches, to be later be upgraded to nine,“ Kumar said.

The trains will have an automatic fare collection system.

The Centre and three state governments will fund the project. “Both the stakeholders (the Centre and the states) would contribute 50% each. We also plan to raise funds through property development along the corridor and loans from multilateral agencies. The possibilities of private participation in the project are also being examined,“ Kumar said.

In Delhi, multi-modal stations will be provided to integrate the RRTS with Delhi Metro and DTC. There will be feeder services also.

An urban development ministry official said 11.7 lakh passenger modes (private vehicles, buses, trucks, etc.,) cross Delhi borders every day. “The RRTS would go a long way in decongesting the traffic in the NCR,“ said the official.

Rahul M wrote:if it's not DDM, 160 km max speed is not that higher from what we have now. I was hoping 180+ at least.

The work on the first phase of the Rs12,000 crore Metrolink Express for Gandhinagar and Ahmedabad (MEGA) project is likely to begin by November.

On Saturday the authorities undertook a ground check according to the guidelines given by the advisor to the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation Ltd (DMRC). To discuss related issues they met officials of Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) and Ahmedabad Urban Development Authorities (AUDA). The MEGA authorities visited the metro rail route in Ahmedabad from Vasna APMC to Motera. Sanjay Gupta, chairman of MEGA said checking the ground reality was a routine exercise on the metro rail route.
“We are ready to start work on the metro rail within a period of three to four months. However, exact schedule will be announced by the state government,” said Gupta.

Gupta expressed his satisfaction about the ground reality on the Ahmedabad route. “The ground alignment is satisfactory and surprisingly there seems to be no obstacles in the way of the work at present on the route,” Gupta said. The chairman of MEGA also praised the AMC and the AUDA officials for their support.

Guruprasad Mohapatra, municipal commissioner of Ahmedabad, said AMC has a larger role to play in the implementation of MEGA as most part of the route, from Vasna to Motera, passes through Ahmedabad. “The BRTS and the metro rail will complement each other,” Mohapatra said.

The metro rail project will be carried out in a phased manner. The first phase of the metro rail project will cover a distance of 32.65 km from Vasna APMC in Ahmedabad to Akshardham in Gandhinagar and 10.90 km east-west corridor between Kalupur and Thaltej in Ahmedabad. In the second phase, the metro rail will connect Ahmedabad and Dholera special investment region (SIR).

According to sources close to the development, if funds for the project flow in smoothly, the project can be completed within two to three years once its work begins.

Uttam wrote:More speed would certainly be desirable. I am not sure though how the economics of it works. I suspect the investment required for a much higher speed track would be much more than the four states would be willing to commit. In any case this is a welcome development. This will also help in reducing pressure on Delhi, and I am sure there are many other metros that can use such a system.

Top Japanese firm Hitachi, in collaboration with Mitsubishi, is in talks with Tamil Nadu government for providing monorail technology for the state’s 300 km project.

“The technology is environment-friendly and is different from the slab structure guideway used by the Metro Rail. Even the infrastructure of monorail costs 30 per cent less and it is quake-resistant,” Hirabaya said while citing an example of Osaka monorail, which withstood the quake in 1995.

He said the passenger capacity of a six-car train in a 90-metre platform length is 62,440 people per hour per direction (PPHPD) and is somewhat comparable with Metro Rail.

Theo_Fidel wrote:Singha,

In India it is impossible to get contractors to follow construction drawings. Even if they are being paid an arm and a leg to follow specs from Massaland.

I ran into this silliness last year while installing the car park and access lanes for a MNC in Hyderabad. The MNC has specific requirements due to special medical containers it ships and receives. There were carefully laid out plans for 6" curbs, rumble strips, grate drains, truncated dome crosswalks, 25' radius curves, 40' radius curves, landing heights, etc. During the pre-bid and during construction they were repeatedly reminded that they were being paid double the normal amount to follow these requirements. I won't mention the construction company other than to say it is much admired on this board and has a foreign sounding name.

I get there one day, 2 months before opening and the usual crappy 3 " un-reinforced concrete disaster has already been laid. No survey was done. The entry cut appeared to me to be 5' off from the drawings. The pavement looked neat and clean but was completely useless to the MNC. Of course it was too late to do any thing, so the landscaping was nixed and concrete was filled in from building to wall all the way around. Now the grading is a problem and water accumulates against the building now, right under my base isolators. A stinking pool of water.

The first time the MNC tried to ship their equipment in, the dock leveler was too low and they were hesitant to move the sensitive refrigerated materials by hand so it got shipped back home that very night. The contractor is not fixing anything despite giving firm assurances he will do so. The facility remains partially open as we wait for fixes.

I can't even imagine what it must be like to get contractors on highways to follow drawings. They have no conception of precision and following survey lines. The people at the top often know how to do it right but it does not filter through to the bottom. The Indian tendency of doing every thing at last minute means we do not get a chance to fix mistakes.

Given my experience with the muncipal roads staff, I had put this down to not having enough civil engineers to direct the labor

Jaspreet wrote:The labour is not controllable. They're uncivil and indisciplined. If the CE insisted on following some standards, they'll beat him up and portray the incident as him harassing them in the first place. Increasing civil engineers won't help. Someone, or some 10 of them, standing there with a lathi enforcing the requests of the civil engineer would help.

The Chennai Monorail project is off to a brisk start with the State government initiating an international competitive bidding process to build a system traversing a total length of 111 km in the first phase.

The developer will be responsible to design, construct, finance, own, maintain and transfer the project after a period of 30 years.

With the State under the grip of a power crisis, a monorail system powered by a battery/solar combination is likely to be preferred.

Sources attributed the strong focus on suburbs in the current proposal to a conscious push to extend mass transit options to the peripheral areas.

The capacity of one train would be about 560 passengers, which translates to a capacity of about 10,000 passengers per hour per direction. All the proposed monorail corridors have been chosen to meet this capacity by 2021.

With two metro corridors already under construction, the monorail network almost a certainty and preliminary proposals for a Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) doing the rounds, operational integration of the city's various mass transit grids would be challenge over the next 10 years.

SSridhar wrote:The developer will be responsible to design, construct, finance, own, maintain and transfer the project after a period of 30 years.

Theo_Fidel wrote: Can that possibly be right. Even the Reliance metro needed a VGF IIRC. Doesn't mention who determines the ticket price.

One can do the math. The most viable IMHO is the Poonamalee to Kathipara section. All others are wildly unrealistic. The Mumbai metro is costing about Rs 3000 crore and is about the same length. So optimistically lets keep the cost there. W/ an interest rate of 5% & 3 1/3% principal pay back over 30 years. Just the capital outgo will be about Rs 250 Crore per year. Say maintenance electricity salaries etc tack on another Rs 200 Crore or so. The system would need Rs450 crore just for break even. Which would be about Rs 1.25 Crore per day. Assuming a peak run of 24,000 per hour (both directions) for say 16 hours (unrealistic). 384,000 pax max. Each passenger would then have to pay 12,500,000/384,000 = Rs 33 per ticket. Just to break even. Bus ticket from Poonamalle to Kathipara was Rs 6.50 a year ago.

I see bankruptcy for this system.

Wonder how the monorail/malaysia lobby got its hooks so deep into AMMA.

The Tamil Nadu government has kick started its ambitious Monorail Mass Rapid Transit System (monorail) project for Chennai at a cost of Rs 16,650 crore for 111 km in the first phase.

The project will be undertaken under Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Transfer basis with the State Government issuing RFQ (request for qualification) from global players. The State-run Metropolitan Transport Corporation (Chennai) Ltd (MTC) will be the nodal agency to develop the monorail system.

In the first phase, the MTC has identified four corridors of various lengths and the monorail system covering 111 km. This means the cost per km will be Rs 150 crore. The government's final plan is to have nearly 300 km of monorail covering the Chennai metropolitan – that could cost nearly Rs 50,000 crore going by the cost for the first phase.

Theo_Fidel wrote: I'm beginning to think AMMA has received massive kick backs from the monorail/Malaysia lobby to stick Chennai with this bill. MTC will go bankrupt shortly and so end bus service as well.

The State government has invited proposals from consultancy firms for providing transaction advisory services for the Chennai Monorail project.

The consultant's job will be to assist the monorail cell at the Metropolitan Transport Corporation in evaluation of the technical and financial bids received in response to the global bidding process initiated by the government.

SPV to be formed

Once a developer is selected through a transparent points-based evaluation process for implementing a monorail mass rapid transit system in the identified corridors under Design, Build, Finance, Operate and Transfer basis, a Special Purpose Vehicle would be formed within a month.

In the first phase of Chennai Monorail project, a 111-km-long network is proposed to be built, a senior government official said.

Largely financed by developer

The State government would offer an initial ‘grant', but the project would be largely financed by the developer in exchange for land and development rights.

The terms of this arrangement would be clearly defined in a concession agreement, which would also stipulate a user fare structure.

Aiding and advising the government's Empowered Monorail Committee during the preparation of the concession agreement would also be the consultant's responsibility.

Ambitious target

The government has set an ambitious target of two years for the implementation of at least one segment of the proposed 111-km long monorail network.

Work on the 19-km monorail line in Mumbai, the only Indian city where a monorail system is currently under construction, has already taken three years and it is yet to be completed.

Aditya_V wrote:What service, MTC area has increased upto Kanchipuram these days but the no of buses at 2900 has gone down in the last 15 years while population in the Mteropolitan area has gone up by 2 times.

Practically now in Chennai Personal 2 wheeler and TATA Magic share auto is the only viable alternative for those who cannot afford thier own car (Chennai autos can never be for Masses, its is more expensive than FastTrack)