integrated rail system

Different things proposed to counter the transportation problem in namma bengaluru. Mono rail, metro (underground, elevated), rail to airport, etc. I have feeling that it might end up in fragmented network, where in you might end up using multiple ways to reach one point to other (auto, city bus then mono rail then metro and then airport train). This is a best opportunity to build an integrated system rather then ending up in a fragmented web. I have used many of the European public transport, saw it how convenient to have such integrated system. The major junctions would have one metro to another metro or airport line connectivity. Basically you don't have to leave the station (no ticket checking needed while you change the lines!). Most of the times, because of underground lines, the meshed network, connectivity is at its best.

Better planning is needed to facilitate such connectivity. One example is Helsinki, Finland , where they have dug one perpendicular tunnel below the tunnel that is being used. This is for future use! Going underground is 1.6 times costlier to the one that has elevated tracks. If we notice, if the project is delayed, the cost usually increases drastically. We could very well take up the underground approach and think that we built the elevated track some 3-4 years later :-). Underground station can give more coverage, by having more than two elevators to reach the track. Other points (ground level) of each elevator could be strategically placed. Going underground has another advantage that it does not touch the existing shopping/residential setup that much, which has been concern for Indiranagar shopping street. Bottom line, best to have a metro setup so as to cater future possible criss-crossed meshed tracks.

Bellandur traffic woes

In busy hours, most of the junctions have traffic jam problem. The one at the Bellandur junction is no different or may be one of the worst ones. Morning 8 to 10 and evening 5.30 to 7.30, when the vehicle accumulation is at its peak. At these timings, the service roads are also occupied by the vehicles in the same direction as the main roads. These service roads suppose to cater opposite direction movement to reach interior parts of residential area (instead of going to end of main road and then coming back) is not at all possible. See photos below:


The traffic visible is for two lane service road. The three lane of the main road would be usually five lane :-). >Here is the image showing those three lanes during a Sunday morning...

Hope they take up some underpass path for this outer ring road here, very soon!

Look at the cables flying in the second image above! In Shimogga yesterday two boys died as a broken electric cable touched the ground. Few weeks ago, there was an article in newspapers about construction underpass could happen in 72 hours (some additional days for groundwork before and after). Today, they ran another news briefing that it takes much much longer to get it done. Other part of the story is the cost of this ready made underpass is 10 crores Rs, but for the ground work related to moving the cables/pipelines etc is 10 crores! Planning is needed (whie drawing electric lines, fibre optic lines, cable tv lines, telephone lines, water pipes, drainage pipes) and proper, proper plan to cater future requirements!! Cable TV guys just run the cable whatever easiest path they can take.

queue system

On the roads, the guy who wants to take a right turn would not come behind the guys who are already waiting at the red signal. Rather he goes to straight line or even left turn line (if there is space) and puts on a right indicator. He just blocks such lane (many a times there are either free/blinking straights/left turns). In the medical shops, banks, buying popcorns in movie theater, getting into a city bus wherever you mention it, at many instances people just don't respect queue. At the baggage collection at the conveyor belt in the Bengaluru airport, nobody respects yellow line (if you are not next to the belt, it is hard to identify your luggage and if you identify it, taking it out is even harder). In western countries, whenever they such a rush possibility, people just align themselves in a line or wait for one by one to take the service. Why can't we behave like that. At many places authorities are the ones should apply their heads to start enforcing queues. Manual tokens/automated queue number generator boxes should not take much cost. Many a times multiple queues are maintained rather than single queue. Once some queue server delays due to any reason, the guys in that queue are held up. Okay this is not that serious, but many a times it could be implemented to have a single queue-multiple server system.

Anyway, coming back to people's attitude to just to rush. Such rush creates opportunities for thieves. Recent visit to Mysore Palace, such a rush cost me my latest Nokia N95 phone. At around 19:00, they lit the palace with thousands of lights. There was a huge rush to get into the palace campus to see this. Though a queue was started, people just did not go there, but started accumulating near the entrance. There was a security check for all, which was delaying. Suddenly when it became 19:00 people not in the queue started pushing to get inside. Suddenly police started to push these guys backward. In such sudden movement, somebody picked up my phone from my pocket which I felt but could not identify the person who did because of crowd. Unfortunate!! Most of the times, whenever I see rush, I usually step back even if I don't get seat/get inside on time etc. But this time some how I get carried to the entrance while talking to a relative, also the rush suddenly erupted when the police started pushing. Gave the police complaint, but did not get convinced that they would trace the phone. Besides, another two points: first one, when rush started, people were entering around (not inside) the detector box and no police was interested in enforcing them; second point after 10-15 minutes, there was no rush at all (felt very sad looking at it, I could have entered at that time!).

Being techno-geek, I have started to experiment (with this device) the GPS, videos, usage music/video player/fm radio, browsing, usage of WLAN (with hoem wlan), games (also playing it by connecting to tv), widgets, million other applications/services. But after I lost this phone, I no more have the appetite/energy/interest to have another similar device. I feel that this is useless to have in India, rather use a simple phone.

Coming to appetite part, there are so many dents/scratches on my car, and I don't feel like correcting them. There is no point in spending money on that as those things keep happening, because the way traffic on the road goes, the way people park and open their car door, etc. In our apartment complex, so many cars are in similar shape. A friend of mine was keep correcting such dents, finally insurance guy told him to hold on all the repair works, get it done when he is planning to sell the car.

Why we can't have proper system? Why people don't use common sense?

Headlights

Around namma Bengaluru, during night drives, you need to wear sunglasses(polarized glasses) for eye protection. Usually where there is a need to keep the headlight in low beam position, people won't follow the rule. I have seen some guys, they even put on fog lights in addition to high beam. An USA returned friend, once stood on a ring road and stopped all the vehicles with high beam, and told them to switch to low beam :-) In fact what we need is police petrol to control such things. Proper night driving lessons+tests needed while issuing the license. When buying goggles, shop owners suggest to go for polarized glasses for night drive, shows the state :-)

Product packing

The packings of general mid-range items like crockery, electrical/electronic items are usually pretty bad. Even in highly maintained shops in prestigious malls, same treatment is noticed (there are few exceptions). Below is an example (not a good picture though).



In one of the shop (in namma Bengaluru) I visited, Goggles were placed in a glass with holes where goggle's ear support arms (temples) would go. The holes were sharp edged and no cushioning was made, most of the goggles were scratched at those temples because of wear and tear. Those are expensive ones like police, lecostie, CK etc. Mentioned this to shopkeeper, but did not look convincing that he would take any actions on that.

Toilet usage, generic improvements

These days, in most places, they are installing the western style commodes. Lack of usage knowledge usually result in a shitty condition. Some gents, don't lift the toilet seat while peeing, leaving urine strays on the toilet seat. People prefer water than toilet paper, which is fine. But often they don't wipe out the extra water on the seat or on the floor, leaving next person to have second thoughts on using the toilet. Some even forget to flush. Some toilet flush knobs have water control mechanism. That is, if you rotate the flush knob instead of pressing it, it controls the water flow quantity. If some body unknowingly rotates and keeps it in low quantity position, that is it. Next guy might not know this mechanism, just presses the knob, notices that flush is not complete, leaves it like that thinking there is a shortage of water! Horrible, isn't it!

In most of the places, it would be good to have Indian commodes as well. Especially when low labors are also using it, who are unaware of western toilets usage. Of course not saying anybody should be discouraged to use them but they should be educated. Those who missed this part, might very well miss the etiquette. In general I feel, in schools, homes usage/guidelines needs to be mentioned and also tv/movies deliberately introduce scenes on usage for public awareness.

Please do comment if something above is wrong or missed.

Bangalore v/s rest of the other indian cities!

Check this out (blogged in decmber 05) Bangalore v/s rest of other Indian cities from mindofanil.blogspot.com.

Bangalore map on internet enabled phone

If you happen to have GPRS connection on your phone, or if you have home wlan connectivity to your home broadband connection with your phone having WLAN capability, you can try out namma Bengaluru maps from Google. Use your phone web browser to point to http://mobile.google.com, and then install useful utilities like mail, maps, etc. Maps is an interesting application, type location as Bangalore and you get good quality namma Bengaluru map at your hand. GPS enabled phones give more assistance than just map. Nokia has its own maps application for its GPS enabled phones. GPS on these devices is not that powerful, it takes a while to show the co-ordinates, but future phones could solve that issue. As of now, for outdoor (And slow moving), it is pretty useful.

Lack of underpass for ring roads.

Absence of city planning has resulted in mushrooming of apartment complexes/ shops/ hotels etc besides ring roads. Better plan would have been to build townships besides the ring road and an exit from the main road to such townships. Inside the township maintain residential area as well commercial places. Also, make sure to have sufficient space left between the ring road and the first building of the township. Unfortunately people want to have their house closer to the main road. Closeness to the ring road means loud noise from the speeding vehicles (mainly trucks). Even terrible is some drivers make continuous honk and get some kind of satisfaction by doing so. Somehow people staying in the apartments close to the ring road get used to the noise to a certain extent. But for the guests it is difficult to adjust. Guests left earlier than their schedule just because of noise level (and also decided to avoid the visits as much as possible).

Shops on either side of the ring road meant, people started to cross this road (total of six lanes high speed and another 2+2 service road lanes) with heavy traffic. Few weeks ago, on one unfortunate day, an old lady from our apartment complex crossed the road to visit a dentist on the other side of the road. While coming back she could not gaze the taxi's speed and ended up taxi hitting her with a screeching break. She passed away 2 hours later in a hospital. This is one of the deaths that happen daily in namma Bengaluru. Human life has no meaning. Neither people care nor government cares! An underpass could have saved her life.

Just underpass won't help, because given an option, people usually take the shortcut. So enforcement (fencing at the road divider, blocking any road crossing) is a must for some generation until use of better options becomes a norm. An underpass exists on airport road near Domlur (nobody who drives on that road would ever notice its existence). Nobody used it and it turned out to be a shitty place.

There are other issues for having underpass as well. Mainly all the cables (telephone, tv) and the drainage pipes etc run just below the ground surface.

Say no to piracy

I always oppose piracy. I Bought a legitimate gaming CD for PC in some furniture fair, and while trying to install in my PC, found that the CD had data corrupted either due to scratches or manufacturing defects. I had not kept the bill as the value was not much and could not track the dealer as the purchase was in shop put up a fair. Of course, CD had manufacture address, couriered them for a replacement. Neither did a replacement nor did they write a courtesy reply. I knew this would be the fate, still to give it a chance and spent on the courier.

The pirated music and movies are available at very cheap price at many places in Bengaluru. Police usually take action to stop it. May be for poor people, who would like to have entertainment, this is a way for them (even if piracy were not there, they would not have spent money on the originals). But what surprises is, the guys with enough income go for this. Worst is such pirated content is used by rental shops. The pirated content is usually bad in quality, as, usually they are camera copy or some kind of compressed version. Still people want them as they want to see the latest movies. Of course seeing latest movies, in their original form in theatres in another big headache in city like namma Bengaluru. Low number of good quality theatres, lack of online reservation, traffic conditions, etc make it to avoid to facing at them.

In Helsinki, Finland, the content (music) they use in shops/restuarents, will pay the originators (manufacturers) due amount for using it for public purposes. I gues it goes same with video rental libraries as well.

Another thing noticed, is for Kannada movies, the producers are not making any DVDs (at least for the hit movies), even after 2-3 years of release. Amruthadaare, is one exception, enjoyed it watching on my high performance panasonic home theatre + panasonic wide screen, high resolution projector.

Lifts and patience

As soon as people get into a lift, one of them becomes lift boy. If he/she gets out at his intended floor, another will replace that person. This lift boy's main job is to keep a finger on the close button. Whenever lift halts at any floor, if nobody is visible in his radar, just press the close button. Usually lifts are designed to close automatically after 15 seconds or so. But 15 seconds are so precious! If there are 6 lifts, a person who had pressed the button before he could realize which one has arrived, the lift would have moved on, courtesy close button!

Once, after my office hours, I came out of office space to catch a lift to reach parking area in basement. There was already a guy and he had pressed the down button. Out of six lifts none turned up. After 6-7 seconds, he lost his patience pressed the up button as well. Okay, now a lift arrives from below floors few guys get out of it and those are the only ones who were there. The indicator for that lift is up, our guy enters into it. I don't enter thinking that it is going up. Now the guy who entered this lift (which became empty just now) presses button 0. Now the lift's indicator changes direction and starts to move down! Unfortunately the door is closed, so I can't make it to that lift. I pressed the down button again and continued my wait. Here, the lifts indicator showed upwards, only because it thought somebody had a plan to go up! There is another architectural flaw in the lift area, with six lifts in place but no staircase!!

In our apartment, we have two lifts for each of the 11 story towers. The two lifts don't talk to each other and hence operate independently. Some people press both the lifts buttons. Plan is to take whichever comes first. At the end, both turn up and only one is used. Waste of energy! Concern here is not about two lifts being independent, but our attitude.

Advances in usage of tech in Marriage ceremonies

Yesterday I had a chance to attend my colleagues, marriage party in Bengaluru. I was amazed at the way they used the technology. Though technology is not new, what surprised me is it has become common usage. There were three professional cameras (ofcourse with -men), and a control center. There were lot of monitors in the hall connected to this control center. The guy operating the control center was taking care of online editing of the three inputs and occasionally adding animations/ stills of closeups. This was actually like broadcasting of cricket match.

And the digital photography was not behind. The photographer had a nikon SLR digital camera with wireless technology. After the snap, asked guests posed along with the newly wed couple, to wait for few seconds, the guy sitting at the far at a computer screen recieved the photo over wireless, and checked if the photo was okay and signalled back to the photographer.

Gokak falls

This year Karnatak state has seen very good amount of rain fall. Many waterfalls were seen overflowing. Here is a clip of Gokak falls during mid July. Two weeks earlier, we were told the falls was more wider as the Ghataprabha river region had recieved heavy rail fall. More details from the wikipedea. Some people try to compare this with Niagara falls (I visited Niagara some 4-5 years ago), not by size but by appearance/feeling. One thing this fall lacks is constant water source, which is heavily dependent on rain. Hence, not much effort is put on improving tourism here. Ofcourse there is a hanging bridge. Walking on that, is bit scary, with doubts coming into mind, if the wooden planks are strong enough, how old are they? Anyway, it is a thrillling experience. There have been bitter experience for some who were careless on the bridge or near the cliff where the water falls (some times wind is very strong).

Around 15-20 Kms from this place there is another mini falls, Godachinamallike, which is usually ignored. Below is a snap. Our jounrey from Gokak to Belgaum was memorable as we travelled through a newly upgraded road (funded by some international bank). The quality of the road and the landscape was so nice that I recalled my jounrey in Costa del Sol, Andalucia, Spain. Hope all the roads get this kind of treatement in quality. This road connects National highway 4 and 13, with one end at Belgaum (NH4).

Independence day -2007 celelbration at Sobha Aquamarine

New apartment culture brings its own small community life. At Sobha Aquamarine, Bengaluru, we celebrate major events. Today it is independence day and this is second year here. Below is a clip taken from our new Nokia E65.

Beginning

After staying in Finland-Europe for over 8 years, returned last year back to India and Namma Bengaluru in particular. I had stayed here earlier for two years (96-98). I want to shed some feelings, good things, bad things about Bengaluru or India, now, the way I look at it. This is the first post to this.