BENGALURU: While the Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT) has prepared a draft BMLTA (Bengaluru Metropolitan Land Transport Authority) bill which will soon be tabled in the assembly, many citizens have urged the government to conduct a public consultation on it.
The proposed BMLTA will be a unified transport body that will integrate multiple government agencies and come up with initiatives like common mobility cards and multi-modal transport hubs.
“There has been no public consultation. Citizens need to be consulted on all legislations. Mobility planning is a subset of master planning. The Comprehensive Mobility Plan (CMP) cannot be a standalone one; it has to be part of the city master plan,” said Sandeep Anirudhan of Citizens’ Agenda for Bengaluru, an NGO.
“Why not first release a draft so everyone can see and comment? Decisions on laws are taken by the political class. They will decide if it will be made public etc. There is no elected BBMP and no one knows when it will happen. BMLTA’s decision is a far-reaching one. If done badly we are even more doomed,” said Vinay Sreenivasa, a mobility activist.
DULT’s draft bill
The National Urban Transport Policy recommends the formation of a Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority. Though a BMLTA committee was constituted in 2007, it didn’t have any statutory powers. However, the BMLTA bill aims to constitute the authority with statutory backup to regulate and coordinate urban mobility initiatives in the Bengaluru Metropolitan Area (BMA).
At present, agencies like the transport department, BDA, BMRDA, BMTC, traffic police, BMRCL and BBMP are responsible for planning, development, implementation and management of the city. Given that multiple institutions and departments are at work, overlapping of responsibilities and functions is impeding planning and implementation.
According to the draft bill, BMLTA will have 21 members with the chief minister as chairperson and the ministers of Bengaluru development and transport as vice chairpersons. Other members include the BBMP mayor and representatives from departments like urban development, transport, finance, public works, women and child development, police, BBMP, BDA, BMRDA, DTCP, KSPCB, BMRCL and K-RIDE. The DULT commissioner will be the CEO of BMLTA. There will be two special invitees from South Western Railway and NHAI. It will also have 10 non-official members—three experts from urban mobility, corporate governance and finance, two from civil society organisations, three from institutions representing private sector and professional bodies and two from academic institutions.
A BMLTA fund will be set up for implementation of the Act. The government will also constitute a seed fund.
Functions and roles
* Lead the transport planning agenda and create constructive urban nexus with land use
* Prepare Comprehensive Mobility Plan (CMP), set standards, provide uniform planning parameters, develop modelling tools and help implementing agencies provide quality outputs
* Coordinate with all government and private sector stakeholders, create collaborative ecosystem to ensure design of Comprehensive Mobility Plan alignment projects
* Provide oversight to project delivery and monitor outcomes through defined service-level benchmarks
* Help implementing agency deliver in accordance to plan, evaluate outcomes
* Update planning tools to help design effective interventions in urban transport
