BHUBANESWAR: The Bhubaneswar Smart City Limited (BSCL) will soon receive Rs 79.30 crore aid from Centre for implementation of its B-Active (Bhubaneswar Active) project that aims to develop public spaces, non-motorable transport corridors and improve service delivery in the city.
Under the project, a Smart Active Living Strategy has been proposed to maximise the use of the open spaces for different assets (components) in the city such as streets, water bodies, parks and open spaces, sports infrastructure and playgrounds. It also includes promotion of the City’s heritage, said BSCL CEO Sanjay Kumar Singh.
The B-Active plan will include increasing the cycle tracks in the city to around 30 km. Besides, a 16.7 km pedestrian track will be developed to promote non-motorable corridor. A special apex committee of representatives from Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs (MoHUA), French Development Agency (AFD), European Union (EU) and National Institute of Urban Affairs (NIUA) approved the B-Active project under the ‘City Investments to Innovate Integrate and Sustain (CITIIS)’ programme on July 1.
BSCL had submitted the proposal under the theme of ‘Public Open Spaces’ three years back. It was selected as one of the 12 city proposals under CITIIS challenge in February 2019 at the second apex smart city CEO’s conference held in Delhi. Subsequently, a tripartite agreement was signed on March 5, 2019 for the CITIIS programme between MoHUA, Government of Odisha and BSCL.
BSCL officials said the objective of B-Active project is to resolve the issues associated with service delivery to improve the quality of public open spaces across 2,470 acre, encompassing parts of the planned area and the Old Town area of Bhubaneswar City. Singh said with this approval BSCL will try to implement all the components of the project in a more structured way to achieve the objectives of the B-Active plan.