1. Introduction
1.1 Background of Project
Over the past two decades, the population of Bangalore has been growing at a phenomenal pace, earning for it the sobriquet "Asia's fastest growing city". Currently at about 5 million, the population is expected to cross the 7-million mark by 2011 A.D.
Bangalore's infrastructure is thus under tremendous pressure, transportation being one of the worst-hit. The city depends entirely on roads for all its transport - and under the increasing pressure, the roads are crumbling. TraHlc congestion on the roads of Bangalore has been growing worse with every passing year. The statistics given below for Bangalore City speak for themselves.
The Government of Karnataka has been aware of the immensity of the growing problem and has, over the past 15 years, commissioned several studies to find an acceptable solution.
With time, it became clear that only a rail-based transportation system would be able to meet the city's public transport needs. In 1994, the Government established the Bangalore Mass Rapid Transit Ltd. (BMRTL) to implement the MRT system in Bangalore and in 1995, decided on a modern Elevated Light Rail Transit System (ELRTS), as a joint-venture partnership with the private sector under a Build-Own-Operate-Transfer (BOOT) arrangement.
It, therefore, invited proposals globally from Indian / International consortia, selected the multinational UB Group Consortium (UBGC) and signed an Initial Agreement with it for this purpose in January 1997. UBGC presently comprises four firms - UB Group ( India), ICF-Kaiser Engineers Ltd. (USA), Nippon Sharyo Ltd. (Japan) and T.T.A. Inc. (USA). UBGC, in turn, has set up a new company called UB Transit Systems Ltd. (UBTSL) to actually implement the project.
In this context, UBTSL requested JARTS to carry out the review of the content of the study conducted by itself (ICE Kaiser is in charge), mainly the demand forecast and construction cost estimate, in order to increase the reliability of the UBTSL's study results, and to make use of the study reports of both UBTSL and JARTS for various approaches for domestic and foreign financing sources.
