Airports ready, but how to get there?
Bangalore: March 2008 will see the unveiling of two state-of-the-art international airports in Hyderabad and Bangalore, two of India’s fastest growing cities and rivals for the crown of IT hotspots.
But the question is: How do you get there?
This also means the existing airports in both cities will shut down, effectively doubling or even tripling commute times for passengers to these new air strips. And, that is where a tussle is brewing among developers, governments, air transport operators and, of course, passengers.
At the heart of the simmering impasse is the poor connectivity to these new airports, located kilometres away from city centres. And the state governments haven’t helped matters by not speeding up work on linking these hubs to the city centres.
As things stand, commute times in both cities to these new air hubs range from one-and-a-half to three hours. That has left many stakeholders fuming.
In both cities, there is a rising public demand that the existing airports be allowed to continue operations until better connectivity to the new airports is in place, but the bipartite agreement doesn’t permit that.
Several prominent citizens in both these cities have argued that the government should not have agreed to such a clause, but then we need to understand that for the investors’ consortium, setting up an airport is a business and not a social responsibility.
It is because the government has failed to fulfill its responsibility that private players have come in. And if they make a few bucks out of the deal, so be it.
Lopsided priorities and lack of planning have led to this impasse. While planning and executing these airport projects, the government obviously overlooked the question of connectivity. It’s like building a mega apartment complex without providing for the elevator, or constructing a bridge without approach roads.
What stopped the respective state governments from thinking about the approach roads then? And both Karnataka and Andhra Pradesh governments should take the rap for missing out on this.
Another major concern for passengers is the user development fee. BIAL has sent a proposal to the Union Civil Aviation Ministry seeking to levy a development fee of Rs 675 on outgoing domestic travellers and Rs 955 on international travellers.
Source: P.Venugopal (India Syndicate)
