ExpertDabbler

Idea #5

Time and again, our governments will hear cries from the industry on the need to build better roads. Our politicans will launch project with great fan fares. New slogans will surface for e.g ‘Eversilver Parallelogram’
(idhukunne room pottu yosipangalo?? okay, vajpayee admirers forgive me, this is just for fun).

The problem will start when it comes to land acquisitions for those projects. One assertive citizen will approach the court, and one judicious judge will issue a temporary injunction. Govindaa Govinda!!

There are cases which run for 50 years. In the meanwhile, our population will continue to grow exponentially, our cities will witness 1000 new vehicle registrations a day and we, the citizens of India, will put up with all this and continue our lives.

The Indian Railways is one of the biggest of holders in the whole of India. What’s more, their land tracts connects cities and states effortlessly. For the uninformed, the railway tracks we cross during our commute are confirmed railway property, no RAC or waiting list business there.

My thinking is, instead of acquiring new land and get into a landmine of problems, why not get into an understanding (aka revenue sharing agreement in case of BOT models) with the railways and build roads in their property? Ofcourse, the railways will have plans for expansion of their railway lines. But we can always build roads in some elevated structure without hampering the expansion plans of the railways.

And anyway, if the railways are reluctuant to share land for infrastructure development, it does not make much sense to ask one individual to give away his only property for govt. guideline values.

I am thinking out loud here - probably some other person has articulated this before. But from whatever little I heard, the emphasis has been more on building hotels, developing real estate and laying optical fibre cables in railway lands but never on buidling roads.

Ofcourse this will not solve the traffic jam in Kathipara junction tomorrow. It will still take 90 minutes to come from Tambaram to Guindy duing peak hours. But yeah, we can avoid new instances of Kathipara like experiences in future.

Brickbats welcome!

This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 4th, 2007 at 10:55 pm and is filed under Ideas. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.