Business Line 14.09.2009

Ramky is lowest bidder for waste management project

A view of the Koyambedu wholesale market in Chennai (file photo). — K. Pichumani

R. Balaji

Chennai, Sept. 13

Ramky Enviro Engineers has emerged the lowest bidder (L1) for the integrated solid waste management project to maintain the 60-acre fruits and vegetables wholesale market.

According to reliable sources, Ramky Enviro Engineers’ bid of Rs 846 for every tonne of waste cleared made it the main contender to bag the contract in competition with the Mumbai-based Antony Waste Handling Cell. A final decision on the award of the contract will be taken after a negotiation meeting later this month.

The bid was called by the Chennai Metropolitan Development Authority (CMDA) for maintaining the fruits and vegetables market, which houses over 3,000 shops and receives over 1,00,000 buyers daily.

It is a part of the 300-acre Koyambedu Wholesale Market Complex considered to be one of the largest markets of its kind in Asia.

Fuel from waste

The primary objective will be to operate a 250 kW power plant, which will use the organic waste from the market to generate power through bio-methanation. This process uses the combustible methane-rich gas produced during the decomposition of the waste to fuel the power plant.

The power will be supplied to the Tamil Nadu Electricity Board and the revenue will be shared between the contractor and the market management.

Waste generated

The sources said, the market generates over 150 tonnes of waste daily, and the power plant will use about 40 tonnes, and an equal amount will be composted through vermin-composting and the balance will go to the dumping yards.

Ramky Group is a diversified group with a presence in environment management, infrastructure and real estate development. Ramky Enviro Engineers, a group company handles municipal waste projects in Bangalore, Delhi, Ahmedabad, Coimbatore and Kottayam.

The Hindu 14.09.2009

Online mapping of MTC routes

Ajai Sreevatsan

CHENNAI: A group of students have come together to map Chennai’s bus routes and make it available online, an initiative aimed at helping commuters, particularly those new to the city.

You no longer have to go to a bus stop to find out if there is a bus available from there to a particular destination. Just log on to the Internet and type a few characters to get all the information. The online project (http://busroutes.in/chennai/) which is completely open-source, provides a virtual public transport network of the city.

“There are plans to integrate the suburban train network and share autorickshaw routes,” says Arun Ganesh, a student at the National Institute of Design, who is coordinating the initiative.

“There is a need for a centralised database of public transport. Provide them better information so that they can shift to a public mode of transport with ease,” he says.

A lot of data about public transportation system is available, but it is all personal. The idea behind the project is to ‘crowd source’ information from people who use the bus routes and make it easier to visualise and browse through all that data. Rabin Vincent, who has worked on the site, says, “The Metropolitan Transport Corporation website has stage-wise route information, but it is inaccessible to search engines and not user-friendly. Information needs to be more easily available to search engines, and by extension, to the people looking for it.”

Solutions for issues that the community faces are best dealt through open collaboration, feel the students who were involved in the mapping project; which is why the OpenStreet mapping protocol was used.

Arun Ganesh admits that five to 10 per cent of routes have errors. “The primary data from the MTC has bus stops with names such as ‘tea kadai’ and ‘water tank.’ It is difficult to map these stops. But then, the code is entirely open-source. Anybody can take it and work on it.”

The way forward for the project, according to Yuvaraj Pandian, a second year engineering student, is to incorporate frequency data and multi-point routes which would give switching points from one bus to another.