The highway in question is cratered with potholes due to shoddy, cut-rate roadwork that disintegrates at the first sign of inclement weather.
The worst part? There’s a train between those same two cities, but the state of the railways in this country is beyond the pale, ironically because the government is pretending to invest in shiny new roads that…are cratered with potholes and disintegrate at the first sign of inclement weather.
Wow I’m shocked that right wing religious extremists are shit at governing!
Prefixing left- this and right- that to anything detracts from focusing on it.
Since we’re doing double-replys. Would you say that the Muslims are infesting your homeland?
What are you going on about!
You’d be even more shocked that left-wing politicos, who were in power thrice as long, were equally bad and created the mess that has to be managed.
What year do you consider these theoretical people to have been in power? When did their reign of terror end?
haha. The Congress is not left-wing? The party that decreed we were a “socialist,” secular republic? Is the current government doing anything that is not a continuation of what previous ones were doing?
Why’s there a lot of India focused content on fuckcars for the past few days? Genuinely curious! First, there was this post regarding an incident on Uttar Pradesh and now this.
That’s mostly my doing. I live here, and I have to bear witness to my people becoming more and more carbrained by the day as the government bends over backwards to cater to corporations and rich people with fancy cars at the expense of the gigantic majority who rely on public transit, bicycles, or just walking to get to where they need to go. I hate it.
Please keep posting, I like learning about India.
Thank you sharing. It is interesting to see perspectives from all over the world.
Thanks for contributing - it’s good to get a perspective outside of the usual North America/Europe duopoly.
The sub is pretty low traffic, and you’re not a particularly prolific poster, but I guess it’s enough to tip the scale of people going “wait a minute”. It’s good to have you here, and hoping sanity prevails. It’s crazy the amount India has changed from being pedestrian friendly to being a sort of car nightmare.
low traffic
ayyylmao
Take your upvote, and go home.
Given the size, wealth, and density of India, I expected the list of underway and upcoming train projects to be much longer and ambitious. Of course, the hyperloop project is… special.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_of_rail_transport_in_India
I also expected there to be more high speed rail going on. There’s at least one actual HSR route being constructed, but a very long list of “maybe nots” built up. Once the single route goes into service, India will have 300km more HSR than the US does (which is zero):
https://themetrorailguy.com/high-speed-rail-projects-in-india/
Given the size, wealth, and density of India
The latter two are heavily tilted in favor of the ultra-rich elite (who prefer to fly or drive) and major cities (packed to bursting with people, overloading existing transit systems), and then there’s rampant greed and corruption to contend with.
The current government isn’t focusing on the trains ordinary people need (local trains with lots of unreserved compartments), because these are subsidized and run at a loss. They are running IR like a private company, trying to build vanity projects and put out more luxury trains with surge pricing so they can make money. Also replacing historic stations with crimes against architecture.
Mamata Banerjee ran the rail ministry for five years without raising the ticket price by one rupee, and she’s, well, Mamata Banerjee. How come the current geniuses can’t do this?
We happen to have a public-sector-only rail system, with low ticket prices on most trains. I don’t know how much it costs to keep the majority of routes, subsidized as they are. Maybe the vanity projects with high-ticket prices will help with that. I believe the bigger expenditure perennially has been on personnel, as IR has lakhs of employees. That can’t be wished away.
I don’t know how much it costs to keep the majority of routes, subsidized as they are.
Passenger transport is subsidized by goods transport. And the more expensive classes aren’t as subsidized.
Maybe the vanity projects with high-ticket prices will help with that.
But previous ministers didn’t need to do all that! And most Vande Bharaths or whatever run with empty seats, while general compartments on normal trains are overcrowded. So there is a misallocation of resources.
I believe the bigger expenditure perennially has been on personnel
I don’t know if they are correctly allotting staff to various roles. After one recent accident, it was found that the safety section was understaffed. But in any case, staff can be reassigned, while an unnecessary infrastructure project cannot later be repurposed to do something necessary.
All good points. I mentioned their lakhs of employees, because that bill keeps rising and probably faster than income. It is the public sector - they will waste money on unnecessary things - but they need to keep up with the personnel bill additionally. That combination means they need to generate money from somewhere.
I think government funding patterns have changed, and ministries have been looking to generate funds rather than be funded by the exchequer. Think BSNL, NHAI. So too IR?
The metro rail projects are separate entities, I guess IR only provides oversight.
Not metro; local passenger / suburban trains. The pnes with five and ten rupee tickets.
Rail is only about a century old. I didn’t know we had historic stations. More like Mughal-era and British-era holdovers.
British-era stations count as historic too! CST, Chennai Central, etc. These are usually well-designed stone buildings that can last centuries. Instead we demolish them and build glass and steel monstrosities that start leaking and cracking within a year.
That’s what you meant? Got it. Absolutely, messing with aesthetic durable structures is irresponsible on IR’s part.
