www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-india-19572583
Do bus lanes disadvantage cars drives?
Some of the "justifications" are remarkable...
"He says those who travel in their own cars are the decision-makers, therefore, they should get a priority over buses. He believes that bus users can wait because they are engaged in less important jobs.
"You cannot keep a commander-in-chief waiting in traffic while his army is waiting for his orders. How does it matter if a peon reaches office five minute before time?" Mr Sharan asks."
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The protesters really haven't thought this one through have they?
The economy really would be in trouble if the oompa loompas couldn't get to work. Who misses the boss? My last one appeared on a Friday.
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Some pretty spurious arguments.
They work well in London and a few other big cites with high frequency bus services. OTOH there's one on Weedon Road in Northampton where half a dozen routes don't amount to more than one every 5 minutes. CWOT.
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>> They work well in London and a few other big cites with high frequency bus
>> services. OTOH there's one on Weedon Road in Northampton where half a dozen routes don't amount to more than one every 5 minutes. CWOT.
Perhaps cleverer than you think - though I don't know. I'd like to see the empirical models. But I'm fairly sure it's not about how busy the bus lane is.
- It's a queue jumping lane, so that such buses as there are don't get delayed in traffic jams.
- Bus usage is more likely to increase, and congestion decrease, if buses can queue jump to keep to the timetable.
- It doesn't follow that reducing car lanes increases journey time proportionately. Two lanes moving at 5mph is no better than one moving at 10mph. The bottlenecks are mostly at the nodes, and very often the cars can use what was the bus lane at traffic lights etc, presumably for this reason - so that impact on journey times is minimised, but buses can "get in front" always having clear passage to the next node.
Removing bus lanes may just mean that "pushy" drivers have more opportunities to get ahead at the expense of "cooperative" ones.
Last edited by: Manatee on Mon 15 Oct 12 at 13:16
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The decision -makers will just have to use the busses then, they will then get to the office un-stressed un-tired, and on-time, Simples! (as they say!)
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So I guess he is not going to sack his staff if they are late - after all they are "they are engaged in less important jobs."
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>> So I guess he is not going to sack his staff if they are late
>> - after all they are "they are engaged in less important jobs."
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You are looking at this from a Western perspective. In China and India, the supply of labour - unskilled and skilled - far outweighs the demand for it.
Take note of this comment in the OP's article and you should see that "staff" are two a penny in India:
"a daily wage earner, who gets 150 rupees ($2.70, £1.70) a day, is marked absent if he doesn't report for work on time."
Another recent BBC report about the billionaire F1 team owner Vijay Mallya's Kingfisher Airlines illustrates the dire position of workers in India:
www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-19796174
"Kingfisher Airlines has told the aviation regulator that it will pay staff salaries, held up for the last six months, in the next few days."
In fact they have not been paid and now the airline has suspended operations.
Can you imagine staff working unpaid for six months in the West?
Another example of how businesses deal with local "obstacles" that get in their way was when Tata Motors abandoned a new plant in Bengal and moved to a new location in Gujarat:
Tata Motors set up a plant here to make its low-cost Nano car and planned to make 250,000 cars a year. Their investment attracted many smaller auto ancillary companies that also built their units here.
For months, the area was a hub of dusty industrial activity - hundreds of construction trucks brought in cement, bricks and sand.
All this brought the promise of jobs for the surrounding villages.
Some lucky ones, like Mr Bangal, were recruited to be trained in the factory. He was even employed as an electrician to work in the car plant.
On the promise of money and a job, he sold his land willingly. But the industry was operational for just two months. Violent protests drove the Tatas away from here.
Now all that's left is bits of equipment amid overgrown weeds. Rows of warehouses and industrial sheds lie abandoned alongside the road.
Last edited by: John H on Tue 16 Oct 12 at 09:07
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During the industrial revolution in the UK, workers were used, abused, killed at work, there were riots, hostility, the land and natural resources were razed or poisoned, All in all severe growing pains for hundreds of years.
China, India et all are all going through their own Industrial Revolution.
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"Delhi row over bus lane reveals class divide" - Manatee
