A Mess called Metro!

Games are won not on wish to win but on determination to win… Sunil Gavaskar.

The little master might have referred above quote to the test series which we lost poorly in England but when I read the news papers & especially the famous or infamous Metro of our city, then I feel how prefect this quote fits here! So much has been written about Metro that I feel by now people must have thought that Metro seems to be only solution for every problem of our Pune city! As, right from Hon CM to every politician from even the smallest karyakarta of the party, NGO’s, Social personality too Media all seems to have this single agenda i.e. Metro on their mind! We are famous for controversies & but no topic related to this city is as fortunate or say celebrity like the Metro, getting so much publicity!

We have been reading about the Metro since more than five years & let me clear in the first clear, I am no authority on Metro or traffic planning, all I am interested is analyzing the scene on the basis of what I have been reading in media like every common citizen of this city! We have read that Metro is the next in thing & which will change the future of this city & this too from nearly now over six years back. Before this analysis lets understand what is the Metro, as many even may not be knowing what is Metro in actual! Well, for those lucky souls, Metro is nothing as interesting as some new age supersonic jet airplane but it’s a form of railway which has a dedicated route within the city or call it track & unlike our regular railway or local in Mumbai, Metro can travel right within the city either on over head tracks or underground, without disturbing the city life around, at least that’s what is expected. Then the coaches or bogies are not open like the regular railway, that’s one more difference & it’s mainly to carry the city traffic & not connecting two cities. Obviously the cost per kilometer length is much higher than the normal railway line & so is the operating cost too.

Now you have got the concept of Metro then let’s see what’s scene in our city. As I mentioned some six years back the dream named Metro has been introduced to us, after that lot of water has passed under the bridge named Govt on this front. But still no one, even the Hon Cm can’t guaranty when actually Metro will start as right from the routes to form of the Metro i.e. whether it will be overhead or underground every aspect which should be freeze, has gone in to just discussion & like the famous Sunny Deol’s “Damini”  movie dialogue , its just “Tarikh pe tarikh”, we have just been reading about new assurances & announcements about the Metro. First of all lets know  as its being projected that Metro will solve all the traffic issues of the city, it’s not so. The routes in combining both i.e. Pimpri Chinchwad to Swargate & Vanaj to Ramwadi, its hardly 31 kms in total. The city after merging new villages & in combination with PCMC has spread on nearly over 650 sq kms & that’s large area. Also the growth isn’t planned, people travel crisscrossing the city; for many travelling isn’t more than 7-8 kms & that too not in straight line, so question is why they are not taking present available public transport? Answer is simple as there isn’t any such! The PMPML or more popularly known as Pune Municipal Transport has failed miserably on providing a sustainable option for public transport & nothing has been done to strengthen the same is also a fact.

So a question for common man like me is till Metro don’t come in existence why the available means of public transport is not being improved; as we have witness the fiasco of BRT i.e. Bus route transport & on this background when even to start the Metro its being taken more than six years what warranty our rulers are going to give about successful implementation of Metro?

After confirming the routes & nature of Metro, which by my knowledge is now will be above the ground then comes the rest of formalities which has been laid by Central Govt, like formation of a separate company to monitor the Metro but what we read in media confuses us more as there is no such company formed yet & on the top of it State Govt & Central Govt including every person related to Metro is making statements so much contradictory to each other that even a sane person will go mad reading them! State Govt & ruling parties in state says they have compiled everything asked by Central Govt & its new Govt which is of opposite party, is biasly behaving & holding up the Metro of the city. Central Govt & the people of opposition in State says it’s the negligence of State Govt which hasn’t fulfilled any norms laid by Central Govt & that has caused delay to the Metro. And in this fight there isn’t approval by Central Govt till date to the Metro, so no question arises about budget provision for the same!

In the mean time, has even Hon CM even went ahead & declared the date of Metro bhoomipuja, whereas there even is no appointment of some post as Special Operating Officer for the Metro; which is again a mandatory condition! And joke is the person who has been appointed at this post has been sacked & new biodata's have been called & there is no response to the call is the latest news! Obviously no wise person will like to become scapegoat of our rulers, is what I guess! My my! So much of fuss over a route of just 31 km!

What all this shows? Are we incapable of even finalizing one railway track in city which is supposed to be Oxford of the East! Is there no one in entire Central Govt or in State Govt or in city civic body, who will come forward & take the responsibility of making the Metro a reality? I think all concerned don’t want to take any risk of losing this battle which has been already lost; as it’s said that the battles are win or lost in planning & on paper & what happens on field is just execution of what has been planned!

Following the track of paper work if we go by what media says then the delay itself has caused nearly five thousand crores rupees of increase in costing of Metro i.e. today it will cost over some eleven thousand crores & each year’s delay will add on some seven hundred crores of rupees in the costing. Looking at figures again a poor common citizen like me will think that on one side we are not making provisions of merely some hundred crores of rupees for the PMT, then again what’s guaranty that this kind of money will be generated in time & will be made available to the Metro? As some ten percent of amount has to be shelled out by the lock civic body i.e. PMC, means with today’s figures one thousand crores of rupees PMC will have to provide, & from where this money will be generated? One answer is by giving addition FSI to the properties along the Metro track. Well, what if these properties won’t come in time for the development? And also what about the infrastructural requirements of the city which will increase by four times due to this? Even today we don’t have enough funds to buy the reservation lands & the classic example is land under BDP i.e. bio diversity park on the hills. It’s said some one thousand crore rupees will require to acquire these lands & we haven’t yet taken the policy decision for the same & each passing day these lands are falling victim to illegal development & slums! So with such poor track record what’s fate of Metro this even a small kid can tell!

Instead of making individual statements in news papers, why not a single concerned department has published a white paper is a report about the facts of Metro & its viability giving clear idea about the responsibility of individual organization regarding Metro?

And today only I came across a write-up by Mr. Shashikant Limaye, former Special Officer for Metro, he said this is just first phase as so short route can’t solve any problem of traffic but there has to be network of Metro all around the city. Like Delhi Metro started with 60km length & now it’s going towards 300km mark; same is happening with Bangalore. And this is what even I have seen in cities like Paris or Singapore where the Metro tracks covers entire city & then people use it at fullest. At the same time the Metro has to have back up by equally efficient network of road transport; so we will be needing PMT as filler & its importance don’t go down by entry of Metro. So what are the plans for these infrastructure activities is equally unclear.

One may as usual ask what this all has to do with real estate? Well real estate survives on infrastructure & good transportation is very basic need of any city. People can’t live just within four wall but they need to go out of them & earn their bread & so as their kids needs to go to school & so on. Take example of any good city in urban history, it does have traffic problems & only those cities have survived which has found solutions to the traffic problems. Take example of Bangalore, many people have migrated out of the city just because the city failed to solve two basic problems, water & traffic. People get frustrated in every day struggle of travelling to work place & reach back home! Mumbai’s local’s success we all know & properties near to local stations have always been in demand. As already in today’s carrier oriented life every minute of the day counts & if we are wasting it in travelling then its unproductive time & each such minute spent in travel generates more stress in the common citizen of the city. Here is where importance of fronts like Metro or entire traffic solutions comes in picture!

Unfortunate that there is no pressure group formed by the real estate segment of the city or the residents in the millions of units they have build, which will urge the rulers to stop making false or confusing announcement & instead show some action on the front of Metro as well entire traffic scene. Media is also busy in giving publicity to such statement of the leaders which carry no value in actual for the common citizen. Instead they should be asking these concerned personnel’s to bring the truth about the Metro in light so the common man can focus his power towards the right person who can deliver the solution to the problem. After all no one is against Metro but the way we have made the mess of it, the common man is losing the faith in the system & once that happens not even Metro will be able to restore it!

What Metro needs is not budget provision or a special company but a determination to make it a reality & a person who can assure that determination to the common man of this city. And unfortunately in the city of over sixty millions, that one person is missing, making the Metro a Mess!

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Sanjay Deshpande

Sanjeevani Dev.

Please do visit my blogs to know about our philosophy at Sanjeevani ! (Click the links below)

http://visonoflife.blogspot.in/2014/06/a-journey-of-decade-named-sanjeevani.html

http://jivnachadrushtikon.blogspot.in/

Social Side of Sanjeevani ! (Click link below)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/65629150@N06/sets/72157627904681345/

For any of your complaints about city, log in at link below

http://www.punecorporation.org/GRS/Complaint/LaunchComplaintCitizen.aspx

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My City, My Country!

You will ever remember that all the End of study is to make you a good Man and a useful Citizen...John Adams.

John Adams was the second president of the United States, having earlier served as the first vice president of the United States. I am always fascinated by the quotes especially from the people who were & are at the positions from where they could or they have changed the course of the history or made one by themselves! US president is surely one such post & who better than a person at this post can write about the citizenship. All over the world people are curious & fascinated by the country which actually has never been ruled by any neither has ruled any other country, yet their culture , way of living & attitude towards the nation or the city they live in has been the matter of study for many!

Pertaining to our today’s topic i.e. my city, the quote from the US president has such a depth as how many of us have understood the importance of being useful citizen? 

Many will wonder as usual where the topic is going but in the crowded front page with news about Metro  mess or road potholes & public transport chaos, one small news rather an appeal by the local body i.e. PMC has gone unnoticed by many. It was a about participation of the citizens in the annual budget of PMC regarding the works around our neighborhood in the jurisdiction of PMC i.e. Pune Municipal Corporation, a public body which is supposed to keep this city in good shape. As usual not many must have noticed it but it is very important step by the PMC & its nearly fourth year of such it making such appeal to the citizens. We are very much eager to criticize organizations like PMC which are public bodies & we need any reason for that, right from over flowing garbage bins to potholes on roads, when ever PMC fails to deliver  every segment from the society, right from politician to media all are ready to throw stones at PMC!  But at the same time conveniently we forget our role or our responsibility towards the city as or else the very members of the PMC i.e. corporaters would have shared rather promoted this news to their voters. As well the media which is all aware about the rights of citizen & which lashes out PMC for every failure, would have on their own given publicity for the heartwarming appeal to the public to participate in various works which the city needs.

We often meet people who complain that there are so many things which are needed to do around where they live, work & Govt does nothing. May it be damaged footpath or a stinking public lavatory or roads without divider or a need of speed-breaker on a heavy traffic road or road signage’s or trees to be planted, a public garden or a bad maintained natural water body like nallah or a lake in our back yard & the list goes on! I often wonder when we Indians are so keen about maintaining décor & ambiance of our homes or offices why we turn a blind eye towards the outside of our work place or our home. Here we shrug our shoulders & say what I can do? Its job of PMC, don’t I pay my property tax & income tax? Well, is it enough to call ourselves a responsible citizen? When we call an organization like PMC as public body we conveniently forget that we are the public & unless we share our responsibility towards our city, just PMC isn’t going to be sufficient for the mammoth task of keeping this city in good condition!

Though rather than just appealing people abruptly for their opinions about the works in their surrounding, PMC can take a much better stand by sending a detailed form with lists of works the citizens can suggest along with the property tax bills they send. This will ensure two things one the citizens will get a clear idea about the type of works that needs to be undertaken & a message will be sent that a tax payer is entitled to suggest these works as his right by paying the tax to the local body. Also this will be then a much better systemized effort as the data also can be gathered proper format as well in advance to budget. As just publishing in a news form, it may not reach to the masses & then people should know in which format they have to fill the information & where this information has to be submitted & what happened to my suggestion i.e. feedback system is not there right now.

All the best cities in the world are not better places to live just because of the rich structures or advanced systems they have like Metro or Escalators; but they are good cities because the citizens in these cities consider the city as their own & assist the local bodies to maintain the city. Right from segregating the wet & dry garbage to maintaining traffic discipline by not jumping unmanned signals, many things we can do for the city. And it’s the small efforts by every individual towards the city is what makes a city good!

This year we will be celebrating our 68^th Independence Day but have we really understood what independence is! As we still feel everything out of our home & office isn’t our duty! We call it public property & say Govt will take care of it & we conveniently forget that’s the Govt is us only! We are required to tell us what our rights are & what our responsibilities towards the city in which we live & we say we are proud citizen of the free India! If we can’t give justice to simple things like participating in making our city better then what we are going to do for the country? We can’t even segregate dry & wet garbage which is being generated in our own house & expects Govt to do it & yet give you a clean city! Unless it’s no rains we don’t curtail water use which can be a life for many who always have lesser supply of water down the river. We jump the signals which are unmanned & then we expect the Govt to provide camera on the roads to monitor the traffic! 

We always think a miracle will happen & all will be good but we forget that even the freedom wasn’t a miracle but it’s the public which made it possible. Same way our city which is detirerioting fast, won’t be saved by any PMC or some good commissioner or one officer or a leader but its duty of each of us who calls themselves Punekar!

For developers also it’s a warning as I repeatedly say, it’s because this city is good so people are buying homes to settle for their future in here. So it’s our duty too, to keep the city in best condition & that too from the eyes of a common man & not just from our ivory towers! The developers should make their clients aware about every such news & guide them to participate in such moments, remember when we call ourselves developers; it’s the entire society we are supposed to develop & not just few hectors of our own land! Or else one day there will be nothing left to appeal such will be the condition of the city & we only will be responsible for that day!

Sanjay Deshpande

Sanjeevani Dev.

Please do visit my blogs to know about our philosophy at Sanjeevani ! (Click the links below)

http://visonoflife.blogspot.in/2014/06/a-journey-of-decade-named-sanjeevani.html

http://jivnachadrushtikon.blogspot.in/

Social Side of Sanjeevani ! (Click link below)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/65629150@N06/sets/72157627904681345/

For any of your complaints about city, log in at link below

http://www.punecorporation.org/GRS/Complaint/LaunchComplaintCitizen.aspx

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A Journey Called PMT !

“You can't understand a city without using its public transportation system.” …  Erol Ozan.

Erol Ozan is an associate professor at East Carolina University's Department of Technology Systems. And yes the words he used about the public transport shows his wisdom about systems especially like public transport. Since tangaw i.e. a horse driven cart used for transportation, days have gone from our Pune city, the legendary PMPML i.e. Pune Mahanagar Parivahan Mahamandal Limited but popularly known as PMT i.e. Pune Municipal Transport has been more famous for the wrong reasons than good ones. PMPML was created following a merger between the Pune Municipal Transport (PMT) and Pimpri-Chichwad Municipal Transport (PCMT). Formerly, PMT was responsible for public bus operations in the Pune city limits and PCMT ran buses in the neighboring sister city of Pimpri-Chinchwad.

In February 2008, the Union urban development ministry cleared a proposal to provide funds for purchasing 650 public transport buses for Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad. The funds have been issued under the Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission (JNNURM). Of the total, 200 were supposed to be semi-low floor buses. The number of buses sanctioned for Pune is 500, while that for Pimpri-Chinchwad is 150.
At present, the PMPML has a fleet of nearly 2000 buses, transporting about 800 thousand commuters daily. The organization runs buses in 376 routes across the Pune metropolitan limits, and has 10 bus depots and 20 major bus stations. PMPML has a staff of 8610 personnel.

For the sake of familiarity I will be using the term PMT only here. Every day Punekar citizens unless don’t read something about PMT they feel something is missing from the news paper. The city has expanded like a Metro in last twenty years but no city can be complete or get developed in real sense unless it has a sustainable public transport system. As per one of the latest statistics Pune has approximately 39 lacs of vehicles, out of which nearly 30 lacs are two wheelers & rest accommodates four wheelers.

For a city with population of sixty lacs nearly (combinely with Pune & Pimpri Chinchwad), having two third numbers of vehicles in proportion to its population is horrific fact! And considering population under age of 16 i.e. those who can’t drive any vehicle; it means every person of this city has a vehicle of his own & depends on private transportation than public transport. And in compare to private transportation number of buses is hardly some 2000 odd, making it nearly just one bus for 3000 people! I am no master of transportation technology but as a common citizen & as an engineer this seems pretty less ratio!

Now let’s see what’s scene on the roads, with PMT is the only official public transport provider to the citizens of Pune. Not long ago PMT has taken up a drive to make more people travel by PMT & the funniest part is , somebody at top there had come up with a tag line 'Wat pahin pan PMT nech jain" means even if I have to wait but will travel by PMT only! Wow, never came across so transparent advertizing by any organization as in the tag line itself they are accepting that you will have to wait for indefinite time if you want to travel by a PMT! No I am not criticizing the poor organization as for that there are enough loudspeakers & ink in this city. I am just trying to analyze the condition of PMT from the eyes of a common citizen & then I don’t have any moral right to blame PMT as I rarely travel by PMT. I have travelled by PMT quite a lot in my college days & with all due respect to hours spent at bus stops giving no shelter from rains or sun, yet PMT was the only affordable option for me then to commute to & fro in the city; and so it is still, for millions of people in this city.  I will always like to know how many of the people who criticize its service actually travels by PMT & regularly.

I think the major failure of the PMT is on three fronts, one is about the routes, another is poor maintenance of commuters’ infrastructure & third & the most important is it has no Godfather!

About first two fronts lot has been wrote as basically no one knows how the routes are designed of the PMT & connectivity of them with each other. For e.g. take my own example, I reside in patwardhan baug & if I want to go to baner where my most work sites are on, I don’t have a single route to go there. This I can understand as with spread of nearly 600 sq km of the city as a region, one can’t expect end to end destination covering single route but then what about connecting routes? I don’t mind changing busses but what about their frequencies as well the timings, so one can interchange the bus easily to reach the destinations in time. Agreed it’s a difficult job as like western cities or even eastern cities like Singapore or Seoul, where work districts & residential areas are well separated, here its easer to plan the proper routes of public transport. But in city like Pune where growth is in pockets & no defined work districts or down town like concept, to define the numbers & directions of peoples commuting from residence to work & back is really difficult task. But at the same time let’s understand because of this non availability of connecting service to the destination many people are forced to use private vehicles in this city! We need to find out a way like ring road circular route peripheral basis & connect this with routes starting from center of the city & for that we may have to make more than three or four city centers!

Another is infrastructure of the PMT; here we are speaking about two types of infrastructure, one is for the commuters & another is for the system itself. A lot can be done, needs to be done for the commuters & about which every NGO as well traffic expert is screaming through the media. So I won’t comment much on that just right from the bus stops too map of the routes, the fare details as well condition of the busses itself, a lot needs to be improve. Most important is data i.e. information to the commuter about the service & here we are lacking poorly. I can travel in an align city like Singapore or even not in English friendly Paris, by their public transport without need to ask anyone but here in my own city I just am clueless about which bus will arrive when & will go where? With the technology giving me information about where I can get best Thai or Italian food in Pune & allows me to book my table at that joint via my cell or laptop on one click, that’s power of information! So why there can’t be an app giving all information about routes, maps, fares of PMT so any commuter especially the higher classes of the society can use this service?

Similarly infrastructure for the employees seems to be very poor as they don’t have proper depots or good cabins as well technology support like GPS available at all bus stops types things. Have you ever noticed the faces of any of the PMT employees? Never saw a smiling face of a bus driver or the conductor, always stressed & irritated are their looks; seems burdened with expectations from the public & poor support from the system! How we can expect commuter friendly treatment from them with such staff? There is a need of constant training as well counseling to majority of the staff as with the state the busses are in & the condition of the traffic on city roads, to drive them on roads is a nightmare for any driver! Need of the time is to boost the morale of the staff or else we can buy machinery with money but not good people, who are the actual force behind any system, if it needs to succeed!

Apart from above two fronts, it’s the third front where I will like to highlight something which we are neglecting about PMT. Any public transport is property of Public means indirectly the reperesentives of the people whom we have elected who owns this system. Speaking about PMT i.e. PMPML, all the elected members of PMC & PCMC are like guardian of the public bus service along with the MP’s & MLS’s whom the city has elected as their representives. So their role regarding PMT is very much important but what we see in reality? These very representives of the public who are showing us dreams about things like BRTS or Monorail or Metro, gives a damn to the existing PMT which can be the best solution to the city traffic! Even the prominent ministers of State including Chief Minister himself are busy in hurrying project like Metro, which may be a white elephant for the city is not showing any interest in giving some time for PMT! Metro is important but just one or two routes of Metro are not going to solve the traffic issue of the city spread over nearly 600 sq kms! It’s the PMT which only can do that job. In short the poor PMT don’t have any Godfather, who will back her up, promote her & takes care of her needs so she can grow well! Not a single person from the rulers comes ahead & accepts PMT as their child & takes her responsibility is the major cause of PMT’s present deteriorated condition. Bothe the municipal corporations just denies their role in making PMT strong but what we see is even for paying the salaries of PMT staff PMC & PCMC are reluctant! As representatives of the public how many of them travel even once a day by PMT is a question we should ask them! Why can’t they appeal residents in their wards to use PMT for travelling & make efforts to strengthen the infrastructure in their wards of PMT! For e.g. taking up a drive of making the residents adopt a bus stop or adopt a PMT bus type drive!

Finally what real estate has to do with PMT is a question people will ask! Well, take any good city in the world & it has been backed up with a good public transport, as private vehicles not only increases cost of living but at the same time they burden the city roads with all sorts of stressful things like traffic congestion, creating pollution as well accidents i.e. unsafe life!  So if we really want a city where residents will be at peace & more & more people should migrate, which are the back bone of any real estate then a good public transport is a must for the city. And if no elected members is going to become Godfather for the PMT then its job of the developers of the city as well every resident of the city to become one for the PMT or else as the quote says today its PMT which is in dying condition, tomorrow it will be entire city under the burden of millions of vehicles & then there will be no Godfather to save us!

 

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Sanjay Deshpande

Sanjeevani Dev.

Please do visit my blogs to know about our philosophy at Sanjeevani ! (Click the links below)

http://visonoflife.blogspot.in/2014/06/a-journey-of-decade-named-sanjeevani.html

http://jivnachadrushtikon.blogspot.in/

Social Side of Sanjeevani ! (Click link below)

http://www.flickr.com/photos/65629150@N06/sets/72157627904681345/

For any of your complaints about city, log in at link below

http://www.punecorporation.org/GRS/Complaint/LaunchComplaintCitizen.aspx

Think Green, Think Life

www.sanjeevanideve.com