The City and the Metro: July 2010

Parisar organised a national level round-table “The City and the Metro”, held at Yashada, Pune, on 20th and 21st July 2010. Many cities in India are going in for Metro Rail systems in an attempt to address their transportation problems. Such systems are already in operation in Kolkata and Delhi with other cities in the process of building a metro system. In total, India is expected to invest Rs. 2 lakh crores (40 billion dollars) in Metro rail systems over the next 10 years. Presently a public debate is taking place in the city across a variety of issues about the proposed Metro Rail System being considered for Pune.

CIRT workshop on PPP / BRT: June 2009

A workshop was conducted on 20th June 2009 at the Central Institute for Road Transport (CIRT) located at Bhosri near Pune. Two major issues were discussed at the workshop: Public Private Partnership (PPP) in bus purchases and the Bus Rapid Transit (BRT) systems being developed in the cities of Pune and Pimpri-Chinchwad. Parisar was an invitee to the workshop.

Pedestrian protest: 7th Feb 2009

Parisar, along with other like-minded groups such as Lokayat, Janwani, Pune Cycle Pratishtan and Pedestrians First organized a protest march from Model Colony to University chowk and back on 7th Feb 2009 to protest against the abysmal quality of pedestrian facilities on that stretch of road in particular and Pune in general. The protest was attended by nearly 100 citizens who marched in peak hour traffic demanding the rights of pedestrians to walk and cross the road safely.

Metro problems

Two big Indian cities, Bangalore and Hyderabad, have been in the news recently because of controversies created by the Metro Rail projects in those cities.