BEIJING: China’s capital Beijing, recently named along with Mexico City as having the worst traffic jams in the world, is looking for solutions. One could be the elevated “super bus”. The bus, due to be tested in the coming months in the western part of the city, travels on rails and straddles two lanes of traffic, allowing cars to drive under its passenger compartment, which holds up to 1,400 people. “We’re going to start laying down test tracks along a sixkilometre stretch towards the end of the year,” Song Youzhou, the chief executive of design firm Shenzhen Hashi Future Parking Equipment, told AFP. “From the second half of 2011, we’re planning to test the bus with passengers on board,” he said, noting that after a full year of trial runs, authorities would make a decision on whether to use the bus on a wide scale. Song said Hashi was in talks with three Chinese carmakers to produce the ecofriendly bus, which runs on both electricity and solar power. Authorities hope eventually to install 180 kilometres of “straddle bus” lines including a route to the capital’s international airport, Song told the official Global Times. Song said the “super bus” could ease traffic congestion by up to 30 per cent, as it does not take up actual road space, but special tracks would have to be put down, elevated bus stops built and new traffic signals developed. Only small and mediumsized vehicles will be able to pass under the bus, meaning drivers will have to be extravigilant. An alarm would sound if an oversized vehicle attempted to pass, the report said. Song said the bus had to be tested with car drivers in realtime situations to detect any possible problems. According to government data, Beijing is on track to have five million cars on its roads by year’s end. The four million mark was passed in December. The head of the Beijing Transportation Research Centre, Guo Jifu, warned this week that traffic in the capital could slow to under 15 kilometres an hour on average if further measures were not taken to limit the number of cars. Private cars are currently kept off Beijing’s roads for one day per week depending on licence plate numbers. Beijing’s air is among the most polluted in the world, and the problem is getting worse amid high demand for private vehicles from its increasingly affluent residents. For days, Chinese and foreign media have issued reports explaining how thousands of vehicles were trapped in an epic traffic jam stretching for more than 100 kilometres on a highway leading to Beijing. The bottleneck on the Beijing-Tibet expressway, which began on August 14 due to a spike in traffic by cargo-bearing heavy trucks and was compounded by road maintenance works... seems to have vanished. A team of AFP reporters drove 260 kilometres on Wednesday along the highway out of Beijing, through the northern province of Hebei and into Inner Mongolia – and did not encounter anything but intermittent traffic jams at toll booths. Hundreds of trucks were on the road to Beijing, packed with everything from produce to live goats — but the traffic was moving.—AFP |
Thursday, August 26, 2010
Elevated ‘super bus’ solution to Beijing’s traffic woes!
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Delhi Metro: Why not than LRMTS or KCR
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Karachi CNG Bus Project: Bank Financing Issue Resolved
Wednesday, August 4, 2010
Pakistan, Chinese Firm Sign Deal for Procurement of 202 Passenger Coaches
Tuesday, August 3, 2010
Present Condition of Lahore Urban Transport: Ironic
“Who will take the pain to resolve the problems we are facing on roads? We are living in a country where the state provides facilities only to the wealthy people by depriving the common citizens who actually pay taxes which are supposed to be spent for their welfare and development purposes,” he says.
He said most of the commuters couldn’t afford to hire taxi or rickshaw to reach their destinations, but mismanagement on the part of departments concerned and a meager number of buses on city routes were adversely affecting their routine business. “The Punjab government has already closed a number of wagons on many routes, causing an acute shortage of public transport in the city.
“Private bus operators don’t have the required number of vehicles which only lead to overcrowding. While the poorly-maintained buses need immediate repair and maintenance as commuters have to face inconvenience when such vehicles break down in the middle of the journey,” he said.
Safdar Jamil, serving in a government department, criticized the role of the Lahore Transport Company (LTC) formed under the chief minister’s initiative to provide transport facilities to Lahorites.
“The LTC has done nothing to provide a trouble-free transport facility to the general public’, he said.
LTC’s enforcement general manager Fawad Qureshi said the company had planned to induct 2,000 new buses within two years.
“The LTC offers capital subsidy to potential bus operators for inducting new buses according to the approved specification. At the same time, the LTC will provide operational subsidy to existing and new bus operators based on a transparent system of the operational subsidy disbursal.
The draft for tendering modalities in the wake of inducting 2,000 new buses is in the final stages, he said.
Mr Qureshi admitted that the people were facing problems owing to an acute shortage of buses on all routes. He said only 400 buses, most of them in bad condition, were running in the metropolis for a population of nearly nine million.
Besides these buses, he said about 80,000 rickshaws and 6,000 wagons were operating in the city.
“Since its inception in February this year, the LTC has tried hard to involve all stakeholders for increasing the number of buses on all routes, but bus owners are not willing to bring more vehicles on roads because of financial crunch.
They (bus operators) are already facing financial hardships to get their 400 buses repaired,” he claimed.
He said bus operators could stop the service if the LTC tried to pile pressure on them to introduce more buses on different routes.
Muhammad Rashid, the general manager of a private bus company, termed the situation terrible not only for passengers but also for bus operators.
He said about 900 buses were in operation in Lahore two years back, but their number had gradually decreased to nearly 400 because of perpetual increase in fuel prices.
“We have time and again asked the LTC and the transport department to provide subsidy for getting repaired the existing fleet of buses, but to no avail,” he said.
He said the LTC was providing only 20 per cent subsidy to bus operators willing to run CNG buses in the provincial capital.
He suggested conducting a fresh survey for operating efficient and affordable transport system in Lahore.LTC chairman and former federal interior secretary Tasneem Noorani said the company would get more than 500 buses within three to four weeks.
“Our objective is to regulate the transport system and make it a viable and sustainable. We will adopt measures to provide qualitative and cheap transport facilities to Lahorites as per the vision and ini tiative of the Punjab chief minister.
“We will not run the buses on their own, but we will involve all transport stakeholders and even new comers to induct new buses under the banner and regulations of the LTC”.
Monday, August 2, 2010
Metropolitan Line Air-Conditioned Tube trains Launched
The first air-conditioned Tube train has gone into service on the London Underground.
Transport for London (TfL) plans to roll the air-conditioned trains out across 40% of the network by 2015.
The train set off from north London's Wembley Park station at about 1030 BST on Monday. London Mayor Boris Johnson was due to attend the launch.
The introduction of the new trains to the Metropolitan Line is due to be completed by the end of 2011.
Air-conditioned trains will be introduced to the Circle Line, the Hammersmith & City Line, and finally the District Line, by 2015.
Budget cutThe total cost of the new trains will be £1.5bn, TfL said.
The budget to cool Tube carriages on the London Underground was slashed by £10m in July as part of TfL cutbacks.
However, TfL said the introduction of new trains would not be affected by this budget cut.
The mayor's office said cooling the network was still a priority but it had to ensure it was getting value for money as part of the network upgrade.
A heat map that monitored the London Underground on 28 July 2008 - one of the hottest days of the year - found the Central Line was the hottest, with temperatures of up to 32C (90F).
The Metropolitan Line recorded temperatures of up to 27C (81F).
The Jubilee Line was significantly cooler with most stations recording temperatures of 25C (77F).
Saturday, July 31, 2010
Meeting for Financing 500 CNG Buses Project on August 3
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KARACHI (August 01 2010): The Ministry of Environment is going to hold a meeting on Tuesday, August 3, with the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP) and other banks to finalise funding for the 500 CNG-powered buses for Karachi. The meeting here would also be attended by representatives of Sindh government, Karachi City District Government (CDGK) and CNG bus operators.
The meeting would discuss criteria of funding to the already delayed project and, if all issues are settled, the 500 environment-friendly buses would ply on the city's road during this month. Beside the funding issue of the project all other arrangements have already been finalised, and the Minister of Environment, Hameedullah Jaan Afridi, is much interested to start the project in the metropolis, sources said.
All studies and selection of CNG bus operators have also been completed by Karachi Mass Transit Cell (KMTC) of CDGK and the bus supply and manufacturing firms were also ready to run the buses soon after the resolution of the funding issue. Earlier, local and international commercial banks and development financial institutions (DFIs), led by the State Bank of Pakistan (SBP), had shown interest in providing loans to the pre-qualified manufacturers and suppliers of CNG buses.
Though the ground working for launching of the CNG buses project have been completed, it was needed to have the private public support to run these buses on at least 40 routes of the city. Sources said that the selected and qualified banks, led by SBP, in co-operation and co-ordination of Enercon, would provide 80 percent loans for the project.
The government would also provide subsidy of at least Rs 0.7million for each bus, while the private bus suppliers would facilitate the 20 percent equity, they added. According to the project, initially 500 CNG powered buses were to be run on the city routes and this number would be increased to 4000 during the next five years.
For the successful launching of the project, the co-ordination and help of other institutions, like Hydro-Carbon Development Institute of Pakistan (HDIP), Infrastructure Project Development Facility (IPDF) and Enercon were also sought. At least 14 private companies, including Midway Consortium, a Punjab-based CNG dedicated bus supplier which has good experience in operating such buses in Lahore and other cities of Punjab, had earlier shown interest to operate its buses in Karachi.
