Tuesday, May 27, 2008

The New Bangalore International Airport: Crib, crib, crib... the best crib story of the town!

Indians crib. No doubt. We crib about anything and everything. The roads are not good, the government is bad, petrol prices are high, water problem, people around us (read 'you') are bad, facilities are bad, corruption is rampant, yadi, yadi.. yadi.

In short everything around me and you is bad or insignificant or unimportant. Yes, may be that is the reason we are still one of the under developed countries in the world. We never get finished with our problems- to start fixing them.

I landed in Bangalore International Airport on 24 May 08' (a day after the opening). There are 2 versions to my story:

1. Crib story:

I calculated the space that was cribbing about the airport in TOI on Sunday: whopping 1.5 pages.. with at least 25% of the front page reserved for this (the rest was exclusively talking about elections: that is another topic for my next blog post).

Now, let me summarize my own cribbings with the common ones till now:
- The airport is too far (too far are you crazy? its like traveling to a different city altogether.. OMG its 60kms from my house!)
- Roads are narrow (now tell me where in Bangalore you find broad roads!)
- The airport is unorganized (ever heard someone wait longer to collect baggage than it takes for the entire journey!)
- The airport is small (OMG why do we need a Changi airport in Bangalore?)
- The ground staff are inexperienced..
- Taxi rates are high (whopping Rs 15/km)
- Announcements are bad, immigration check still takes such a long time, security check is still the same..
- The bus service is bad! The journey is so long!
- The information desk is not operational fully..
blah... blah... blah!

2. The good story:

Whopping 4,000 acres (World's best airport, Changi Airport, S'pore has 3,200 acres). There is potential. Its a sad story that there is only 1 terminal with 8 aerobridges; but I do hope that the sheer size will come in handy.

Ok, summarizing the good side of things:
- 12 million passengers a year can be handled!! Where was the scalability before
- NH7 to expressway. I know it is not enough but... i still feel this is great start
- A metro connection to city planned... I know it takes time. But, all failings will go with this one move
- Entrepreneurial potential... what else could have offered so much freedom to develop services sector (transport- taxis, buses, metro; food, luggage handling, more hotels in outskirts, etc)
- Outer Ring Road, Peripheral Ring Road, Express ways... more and more roads... how else could so many roads come up..!

All in all, its ok. Sooner or later the airport located on outskirts will drive more infrastructural work. It offers an excellent opportunity for a small city to dream of becoming a well planned international city one day!

Ciao till next time...Harsha

Thursday, May 08, 2008

A lot can happen over coffee.

Hmmm..

Ciao till next time...Harsha