10% Lower Requirements For Buildings Beside BRTS, Metro Routes

Ahmedabad: Ahmedabad Urban Development Authority (Auda) has relaxed parking requirements for commercial buildings along transit corridors of the city by 10%. Principally, these are along the BRTS and metro corridors. Auda claims that it would boost the commercial and corporate offices coming up along the corridors. Developers along the corridor also get the maximum permissible FSI — 4.

For the residents of the city battling traffic congestions every day, there could still be some hope. The State government on Thursday announced that it would take up a study on multi-modal integration of transport in Chennai this year.

Finance Minister O. Panneerselvam, in his budget speech, underscored the need for a combination of different modes of transport such as buses, suburban trains, Metro Rail and monorail, and also new innovative systems such as the Bus Rapid Transport System, which virtually remains a non-starter in the city.

INDORE: Poor planning, faulty execution, wrong design and inconvenience to people have disillusioned Indoreans from the BRTS which was quite evident at public hearing on Sunday organised by divisional commissioner on the directions of high court.

Nearly 300 people registered their objections and suggestion on BRTS and its execution. Nearly 61% of the people have expressed their views against the 11.5km BRT corridor. Only 9% of the people have supported the project and 30% are still willing to accept the BRTS with little amendments. Technical experts termed BRTS 'unsafe'. Most of the people raised objections over the safety arrangement on the corridor and believed that the way in which the project has been implemented, has made it quite risky for commuters.

With the Union urban ministry emphasizing the funding of major transportation projects in the country, Gujarat's cities have readied teams to lobby for multi-crore BRTS projects to be taken up on priority basis in the coming JNNURM committee meeting. The Union budget has made provisions for almost Rs 14,873 crore - a major portion of which will be directed at buying 10,000 buses across the country.

Gujarat cities like Ahmedabad, Surat and Vadodara which are either at key points in their BRTS projects, or have yet to start work, would be visiting Delhi in the coming few weeks.

In a fresh order on Friday, the Indore bench of Madhya Pradesh high court directed Indore divisional commissioner to issue a public notice in different newspapers with sufficient space inviting objections with regard to the under construction BRTS project and also to hold a public hearing again.

In the order, Justice Shantanu Kemkar and Justice M C Garg have also set a timeline for issuing the notice and holding public hearing. The court has ordered to issue advertisement or public notice on or before March 4 after which people can submit their objections or suggestions. The divisional commissioner has been instructed to hold a public hearing on March 10 to hear the objections.

PUNE: The much-delayed Pune metro rail project got a funding of Rs 10.01 crore in the Union Budget on Thursday. The Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad municipal corporations, that have proposed the project in association with the Delhi Metro Rail Corporation, have already made provisions in their respective budgets for the year 2013-14.

The budgetary head, 'Pune Metro', figures in the list of projects of the urban development department for the first time this year in budget. The total funding of Rs 10.01 crore has been bifurcated into three components.

Land acquisition for the Puzhuthivakkam MRTS station has reached the final stages with an “award passed for acquisition of 8,462 sq. m. of land.”

The information was shared with officials of the Chennai Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (Cumta), the Chennai Corporation and other agencies at a meeting organised at the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) on Wednesday. With Cumta stressing the need for a well chalked-out strategy to speed up traffic and transportation projects, the CMDA is planning to take measures to cope with legal proceedings and quicken land acquisition.