Traffic mess, thanks to delays

Traffic mess, thanks to delays
New Indian Express

BANGALORE: Avoidable delays in the construction of flyovers, underpasses and other infrastructure have made negotiating city traffic difficult.

It was promised that the National College Basavanagudi flyover would be completed by March. It has gone by and work is still dragging on.

Going by the pace of the work, the delay may be indefinite. Traffic has to pass between the steel girder and scaffold with great care.

The underpass and grade-level roads at the Jayadeva junction are expected to be completed by end of this month. However, the ground reality is that the work is nowhere near completion.

And the dense traffic at this junction which during peak hour, is more than 15,000 passenger car units (PCU)/hour against the junction capacity of 8,000 PCU/hour, is getting worse by the day.

The Rajajinagar Entrance underpass and the Chord Road junction flyover works,which began over two years ago, are nowhere near completion. The dates have been extended too many times without giving sufficient grounds for the delay.

It takes a car over 20 minutes to clear 100m at these junctions during peak hours and the 20-foot trenches remain a major hazard for motorists during heavy rains.

The Airport Road and Anand Rao Circle flyovers are no exceptions. Traffic is bumper-to-bumper on Airport Road throughout the day, it is agonising during peak hours.

At the latter flyover, the detours imposed due to the flyover work make the motorist go round in circles unnecessarily wasting travel time, fuel consumption and adding to the congestion.

The Bangalore City Corporation, which has taken on the mantle of constructing most of these projects, has remained apathetic to the woes of motorists.

A recent study by a traffic engineering organisation shows that the loss incurred due to delays on account of slow moving traffic in Bangalore is over Rs 150 crore per annum, with jams causing another Rs 300 crore loss.

And the prime reason attributed is the unending infrastructure works.