Peripheral Ring Road plan receives setback

Ring Road pushed to periphery?
By S. Kushala/Times News Network

Bangalore: Is the biggest road infrastructure project, proposed to be taken up in the city, jinxed? The future of Bangalore Development Authority’s (BDA) dream project — the Peripheral Ring Road (PRR) — looks bleak.
If things had gone ahead as planned, the BDA would have kickstarted the project by February this year and completed within a year. Now, the project, which is ready to take off is gathering dust for various reasons.
The first hitch was the elections which stalled the process. The next hurdle was the delay in government formation. Now, the reshuffle of BDA’s top brass. Conceived at a cost of Rs 550 crore, including land-acquisition cost, the Peripheral Ring Road will be 109 km in length and will be located approximately between 2.8 km and 11.5 km from the existing Outer Ring Road. The entire stretch has agricultural lands and the proposed PRR passes through the Green Belt except for small patches.
The six-lane, two-carriageway, 60-metre-wide PRR will have a buffer zone running parallel to the entire length of the carriageway. It will have 12 major roads, six railway lines, three water supply lines, 48 major and 20 minor drainages.
Though the CDP of 1995 had indicated the alignment, the BDA recently obtained a satellite imagery of the stretch which revealed that more than 90 per cent of the suggested alignment has been built up as the land had not been acquired. Also, with the growth of the city, the alignment suggested by the CDP has lost its significance.
The BDA has fixed the new alignment which indicated acquisition of 2,050 acres of land for the project. While land acquisition cost has been estimated at Rs 8 lakh per acre, the cost of the PRR per km is Rs 2.9 crore.
While fixing the alignment, the BDA has ensured that it passes only through open spaces and not built-up areas. Also, since it is away from the city, extra traffic from the Ring Road gets shifted to the PRR and not to the city. The BDA had also decided about the mode of funding — securitisation of corner sites. The authority was planning to raise a loan, mortgaging corner sites at banks. After a certain period, banks can auction these sites, recover the principle and interest amounts, and share the difference amount with the BDA.
The future of the project is undecided now. “The project involves raising finances from BDA’s resources as it is not dependent on the government funding. The issue of land acquisition is also another herculean task which has to be carried out without legal entangles. With the government planning to shift the BDA’s top brass, such a big project will definitely suffer,’’ official sources said.

• The BDA is ready with the proposed Ananda Rao Circle flyover. To be built at a cost of Rs 27.6 crore, the five-lane ramp will be constructed by Simplex Piles Project Ltd. The ramp starts from Khodays Circle and ends at Vasavi Bhavan.

• Similarly, the BDA is also ready with an underpass project near Ramamurthynagar on the Outer Ring Road. Planned at a cost of Rs 8.5 crore, the project needs to be tendered.