Now, a new problem that could delay start of monorail

With the country’s first monorail service all set to start by September this year, agencies are now squabbling over its traffic dispersal system. And this could potentially delay your promised ride in the A/C monorail by a few more months.

There is no consensus between the traffic police, BMC and Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority (MMRDA) over traffic management, with the MMRDA’s plan being junked as “impractical and too difficult” to implement by the traffic police.

On Monday, the Empowered Committee (EC) on the Mumbai Makeover project, which discussed this at length, saw agencies disagreeing with each other before chief secretary Jayant Kumar Banthia finally intervened and asked officials to go to the site and sort out the issue instead of finalising plans in a Mantralaya boardroom.

Banthia asked joint commissioner of police (traffic) Vivek Phansalkar, joint metropolitan commissioner of the MMRDA Ashwini Bhide, and additional municipal commissioner Aseem Gupta to visit the site to discuss the plan and sort out differences between the Indoor Positioning System.

The MMRDA presented its plan for traffic dispersal at the seven stations of the first phase of the monorail corridor that is expected to be opened to public in September this year. The 8.8-km route from Chembur to Wadala crosses some of the most congested areas in the city, and the plan — which envisioned creating traffic medians, side pavements and parking bays for giving way to commuters — was criticised by many present as being feasible only on paper. Funding for the traffic management system has also not yet been finalised with the government hoping that every agency involved pitches in.

“The monorail project has been delayed and now traffic dispersal threatens to delay it further. Traffic dispersal and management should have been planned and worked out in advance along with the project and not at the last minute,” said a member of the EC.

Banthia told HT, “In a city like Mumbai, we will always face the challenge of space, but we have to make the best of what is possible. All the agencies will revisit the plan at the site and modify it if required. Funding details have not yet been finalised.”

 According to the published agenda, the council will discuss ordinances to appropriate $53.4 million and $68.9 million in tax increment funds for reinvestment in multiple zones throughout the city for affordable housing costs, administrative expenses, project costs, payment to the Houston Housing Finance Corp. and payments to certain redevelopment authorities.

The council will also discuss a resolution to adopt a drought contingency plan; an ordinance related to exemptions for paying for parking meters for law enforcement vehicles; and an ordinance approving an application to the Department of State Health Services for immunization and vaccines for children.

The agenda also includes resolutions designating several sites as historic landmarks, including the Baldwin-Riddell house, 3963 Del Monte Drive; the Cooper-Bland house; 3262 Ella Lee Lane; the William B. Ferguson house at 3003 Chevy Chase Drive; and the Herbert A. and Elizabeth Kipp house, 2455 Pine Valley Drive.

Several ordinances are expected to be approved, including a contract between the city and AIS International Ltd., for a laboratory information management system for environmental health testing; an ordinance awarding a $3.11 million contract to Synagro of Texas for onsite water treatment, sludge de-watering and disposal services; and an ordinance appropriating $788,621 for the purchase of police emergency vehicle equipment for the Houston Police Department.

It's a miracle that no one was killed when a bridge span dropped into the Skagit River last week after being clipped by an Alberta trucker, cutting off the I-5 north of Seattle. The bridge is one of more than 1,500 in the state considered to be functionally obsolete, that is, not necessarily unsafe but not constructed to current standards and/ or handling more traffic than it was designed for.

As our American neighbours figured out how to get around a blocked section of the state's major artery, politicians lamented how much work there is to be done on roads and bridges and how little money there is to tackle the job. Just a few days before the collapse, the Seattle section of the American Society of Civil Engineers released a report card on infrastructure in Washington state, giving bridges a C-and roads a D+.

We've got our own challenges in B.C., and while the risk of sudden death by bridge collapse may not be as high as beyond the Peace Arch, the decision-making gridlock over new sources of funding for TransLink is contributing to the slow strangulation of traffic in the Lower Mainland.

Now that Premier Christy Clark has performed her political magic, her new government will be in a position to carry out the campaign promise of a referendum on TransLink that would be held in conjunction with the civic election in November 2014.

Clark says the people affected should have a say in how they pay for transit. That's a nice principle, but in practice it's another stick being tossed by the province into the spokes of regional transit.

TransLink was formed by the provincial government in the late '90s to turn responsibility for regional transit over to the region. Part of that responsibility was raising money to operate and expand the system.

But time and again, when the regional management has come up with a fundraising scheme that offends the government in Victoria, whether New Democrats or Liberals, it has been quashed. Among the proposals that have been turned down are a vehicle levy, a parking stall tax and region-wide road pricing.

Under the latest plan, the province is going to work with the TransLink mayors' council to come up with new funding sources that would then be put to a vote.

Given how this issue has been batted about over the past two decades, it seems more likely that they will find new ways to get blood out of a stone.

In February of last year, Trans-Link prepared an extensive shopping list of potential new taxes and fees. It included higher gas taxes, higher fares, new vehicle registration fees, an employee tax, a tax on traffic through the port and an attempt to capture some of the increase in property value that usually occurs along a new transit line.