Consider three mega infrastructure projects, Bengaluru Development Minister, Mr. K.J. George has been pushing for: a) determined network of elevated corridors of over 100 km in the city at an assessed cost of ₹25,000 crore.
b) Proposal to build four tunnels in the city adding up to a length of 17.65 km at an expected cost of over ₹10,000 crore.
c) Pod taxis on six stretches in the city at a cost of over ₹1,700 crore.

With the city government aggressively pushing these mega projects to smoothen the traffic, the question on the decision-making process and the lack of funding model have again come to the front.

There was no public meeting held before choosing the projects. The cash-strapped government companies, reluctant to spend a rupee on them, want to execute the projects through the Build Own Operate and Transfer (BOOT) model under public-private partnership (PPP). However, till date, none of the projects has received any funding from interested parties.

Though the pod taxis and the tunnels are comparatively new, the city authorities have been pitching the network of elevated corridors at multiple routes for two years now, including at Invest Karnataka 2016, but failed to receive any interested bidders.

Pod taxis
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has called for an Expression of Interest (EoI) for pod taxis on six stretches totaling to 35.5 km at an approximate cost of over ₹1,700 crore. BBMP Commissioner, N. Manjunath Prasad, said while a private firm had come forward to do a small pilot project as proof of concept; the project was yet to receive bidders.

Skywalks in the city
However, the city authorities have not succeeded in attracting private investment for infrastructure projects. For example, the BBMP has circulated multiple tenders to build over 100 skywalks in the city with no success. In the recent State budget, the State government has released a gap funding of Rs 80 crore.

PPP projects
V. Ravichandar, member, BBMP Restructuring Committee, said that nowhere in the country had PPP projects been doing well in the city center, except the Worli Sea Link in Mumbai. He also pointed out that the successes have mainly been in the highways sector.

Urbanist Ashwin Mahesh had a different take on the issue. He disagreed that the problem was in the choice of projects. None of the projects for which the government was seeking private investments were conceptualized following the classification of a gap in the infrastructure and a successive study on the possible result, he pointed out. Like the steel flyover, megaprojects are being moved from drawing boards to implementation without any discussion, he said.