New flyover causing traffic hold-ups

New flyover causing traffic hold-ups
The Hindu

BANGALORE, FEB. 22. S. Mahadevan, a software engineer, who lives on Sarjapur Road, says he was stuck in traffic for over two hours on Tuesday morning as he battled for the smallest inch of road space with hordes of truck users and motorcyclists.

"It used to take me an hour to get to work earlier (Bannerghatta Road) but now I take no less than an hour-and-a-half," he says.

A lot of commuters from Koramangala, Sarjapur and Hosur are finding it more difficult to get into the city because the recently inaugurated Jayadeva Flyover near the Jayadeva Institute of Cardiology has eaten into the available road space there, making it smaller and consequently more congested.

The Jayadeva Flyover, developed by the Bangalore Development Authority, consists of a three lane uni-directional flyover towards Madiwala with two arms each for the Banashankari side and Bannerghatta side. Most of the trucks from Hosur on their to Mysore and Tumkur roads have to drive up to Bannerghatta junction to take the ring road. At present, the junction handles more than 15,000 per capita units against its potential of 10,000 per capita units. Over 2,000 trucks pass through the route every day.

Another commuter, R. Geetha says, "This traffic arrangement is just not working. It is madness to try and squeeze your way through trucks."
What makes things worse is that the narrow road has been further narrowed with the dumping off of construction waste on the sides.
All the waste from the construction of the underpass is being thrown here. "They do not have much choice and it is only for a short while," says a BDA official.

The official adds that traffic congestion in the area should reduce considerably once the underpass is ready in June and the flyover fully functional. "Then people can commute from Bannerghatta to Dairy Circle easily," he says. N. Parthasarthy, a commuter, says he believes the way to reduce congestion in the area is by making the flyover towards Madiwala along with its two arms bi-directional. "They should make it like the flyover at Dairy Circle," he says.

He adds that the traffic police should disallow left turns on some intersections of the road. "There are three intersections on the ring road till you get to Bannerghatta and the slow moving traffic at the intersections causes traffic jams. Vehicles can move faster if a few left turns are banned," he says.