Judgment of the National Green Tribunal in the matter of Pramod Tyagi Vs State of NCT of Delhi & Others dated 21/03/3035. A proposal was initiated by State of National Capital Territory of Delhi, Department of Transport to start a Driving Training Institution at Mukundpur and permission was also granted. …
The high-speed trams (HST) project, a pet scheme of the Delhi government and the Union ministry of surface transport, is yet to obtain the mandatory sanction from the Delhi Urban Arts Commission (DUAC). Any project in Delhi that involves construction or building activity has to get DUAC's approval before it …
EVEN before the 2 spans of the Songsu bridge over Seoul's Han river collapsed an October 21, leading to 32 deaths, experts in the country had been clamouring to close several of South Korea's brides due to technical reasons. Closer home, the results of a hurriedly conducted survey of the …
CARS have become the most prominent roadsign on the Indian economy's journey up the rocky road of economic liberalisation. The protagonists of these policies routinely iterate, along with other supposedly supportive figures, the increase in the number and varieties of privately owned 4-wheelers in the country as hard-driving proof of …
After years of harping on the Mass Rapid Transit System (MRTS) -- a Gordian tangle of subways, ring railway and surface transport -- as the best option for an increasingly congested Delhi, the Union ministry of surface transport (MST) has gone back in time for a solution: it is thinking …
WHILE resource- and consumption-intensive development depresses most environmentalists, their ideas are acquiring popularity in ways little suspected. When a heat wave scorched parts of north and central India recently, a leading newspaper waxed eloquent of Delhi becoming a solar cooker and protested that such a change was hardly sustainable. In …
WHAT do you do when a rapidly exploding population starts an exodus to the cities and chokes up the roads, making commuting a nightmare even at high noon? Go in for more cars and better roads designed to take the load? Or do you promote an alternative mode of transport …
TO EVERY car sold in the Netherlands, the Dutch buy 2 bicycles. To own an automobile is no longer a status symbol. On the other hand, the Dutch are very particular about their bicycles. In a country of 15 million people, there are about 14 million bicycles. Since 1970, people …
REMEMBER the man and boychild in Vittorio De Sica's Bicycle Thief? In the prewar grump in Europe, a bicycle could get you places and get you jobs just by its mere objective presence. But, subjectively, without a bike, you were man emasculated. In India, the bike is slowly being converted …
TO BEGIN with a literary conceit: by the time the 'bicycle' came into existence and took 5 decades to establish itself in the lexicon of the late 20th century fashion of urban nomadism, history had been through numberless cycles of change and was heartily sick of them. And then, in …
CALCUTTA is moving backwards. Blessed with a benign tramway system -- a century-old system that is now being seen as a radical solution to traffic snarls and smog -- that has stood the test of urban chaos, it ought by rights to have been expanded and fortified. Instead, the West …
* PATENT wars are heating up. British drug manufacturer Glaxo has won one patents case against a Canadian manufacturer, but faces a second against another. Both claim Glaxo's products -- stable and unstable forms of Zantac -- are not different enough to justify different patents. Zantac is the world's best-selling …
"I WAS A labourer, but now, because of the project, I am free. I cannot explain what this means to me," says Dadabhau Jadhav, a frail, small-built Thakkar Adivasi of Mothewadi village in the foothills of Maharashtra's Sahyadri range. For generations, the Thakkar Adivasis have worked as contract and even …
WHERE do used aeroplane tyres go? Well, at least some of land up in the most unlikely place: the Rajasthan desert. Tyres that once helped giant flying machines to land and take off are being used on camel-carts to transport fodder and water in the desert. The virtual absence of …
TRANSPORT authorities in USA and Europe, where the motor car culture first spawned, are now developing sophisticated technology to monitor and direct traffic in order to reduce congestion on their roads. Several US firms are developing what are called intelligent vehicle highway systems (IVHS) to regulate traffic more efficiently than …
US PRESIDENT Bill Clinton's efforts to tax energy in order to simultaneously reduce the budgetary deficit and reduce carbon dioxide emissions are running into heavy weather. The US senate is now struggling to devise a simple energy tax that will be universally acceptable after strident opposition from various quarters squashed …
NEVER take an expert's word as gospel -- that's what a team of Australian schoolboys would tell you. Despite experts warning them their project wouldn't work, the schoolboys have successfully built a solar-powered catamaran that is "50 per cent more efficient than any comparable vessel". Students from Prince Alfred College …
EVEN AS European Community researchers are developing a powerful computerised translation system that promises to break through language barriers, scientists in Japan, Germany and USA are working on a telephone translation system whose implications for world trade are mind-boggling. Both systems are reportedly in the test stage. The EC project, …
INDIAN scientists are exploring the possibility that neem could provide a non-toxic AIDS therapy. In Ayurveda and Unani, neem is prescribed for diverse ailments ranging from skin diseases to diabetes. Scientists at the National Institute of Immunology (NII), New Delhi, postulate neem's efficacy is not so much because of its …
CANTON will soon wear a different look as its commuters abandon the traditional bicycle for other modes of transport. In a dramatic step to ease traffic congestion, Cantonese officials intend to restrict and eventually ban the environment-friendly carrier, the China News Service (CNS) reports. CNS says the plan to crack …
THE NEXT time you board a bus, don't make a beeline for a seat in the front and avoid the rear seats like the plague. They are the least comfortable. Researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) in Bombay say the seats in front, including the driver's seat, and …
