[beejay]

Originally Posted by narayan

All of us have a lot of time AND money to spare. NOBODY IS BUSY enough to not take up any issues of public interest. attitude is the diffrentiator.

. As mentioned earlier, this is a very good initiative by mithun.

[phamilyman]

Mithun,

a. Most toll projects NEVER recover their money, forget make profits in 13 years.
b. An RTI is futile unless you know the concession details.
c. Fully agree with jkdas
d. That they do not perform maintenance is different from stopping payment of toll. A civic body can haul them up for dereliction of duty/breach of contract, but NOT for making profits.

PS: I do financials for infrastructure for a living and almost 90% of projects I see will never recover full cash and make a healthy profit in like ten years. Unless ofc they neglect maintenance which seems to definitely be the case here.
PPS: Stopping 2 wheeler tolls is often done because the cost (in lower throughput/manpower/systems) outweighs the revenues and hassles (queueing)
PPPS: Of course, disclaimer - anything definite can ONLY be said once the actual data is there.

[wildon]

Originally Posted by jkdas

Seems you have lot of time and money to spare: Appreciate.

Typical Attitude buddy. What will happen when something happens like this in your area?

Face it.. make an effort to sort out the things at least.

so you had all the time in the world to make some bulls*** comment on this topic ! shame on you.

[Spitfire]

Originally Posted by phamilyman

a. Most toll projects NEVER recover their money, forget make profits in 13 years.
b. An RTI is futile unless you know the concession details.
c. Fully agree with jkdas
d. That they do not perform maintenance is different from stopping payment of toll. A civic body can haul them up for dereliction of duty/breach of contract, but NOT for making profits.

I dont have any background in infrastructure or how it works.

But my Uncle a member of GCCI (Goa Chamber of Commerce and Industries), a member of AICTE Board of India and a Phd from IIT took up the case of the Toll taken on Zuari Bridge in Goa in late 90's.

No RTI, no internet, no people with free opinions.

Sketchy details i remember:

Sourced data on toll collected per year, the tenders floated, the income generated and the maintenance undertaken. And a lot more. This is all i know he was working towards.

Tender owned by a politician from South Goa.

The folks at the toll booth were well not the courteous kinds to put it very very nicely.

Other political groups did join in and it was realised that the whole toll thing was a farce for some years, i.e. end of the toll period but still being collected.

It became a major issue with the toll collector needing to pay the government huge amounts of money. In the end to save some face the ruling government brought up some other issue related to the bridge and the toll collection stopped.

PS: This is all i know. I can speak to my uncle (dad's first cousin) to know more.

[greenhorn]

I think jkdas meant it constructively.No need to pounce on that statement. People here are so used to sarcasm that they assume that things are posted with that intent by default.

I for one wish I had as much time to do something about anything!