Speedway to put Bangalore City on fast track

Speedway to put Bangalore City on fast track
Deccan Herald

The BDA has proposed the speedway in conjunction with a distinct central business district that will enhance Bangalore"s image as an international city.

The Bangalore Development Authority has mooted a high-speed “Core Ring Road” for the City. The proposal, one of the recommendations of the Master Plan 2005-2015 (the draft revised Comprehensive Development Plan), envisages a speedway on which there will be no need for traffic to stop at any point.

“The CRR will connect Seshadri Road, Kasturba Road, Cubbon Road, Ulsoor Road, Millers Road, Basaveshwara Circle and Race Course Road. This involves not only widening these major roads but also ensuring that there are no traffic bottlenecks at any point and making sure traffic flow is completely smooth with overpasses at every junction,” a BDA Town Planning member said. While no right turn on the speedway will be allowed, free left turns will allow unhampered flow of traffic, he said.

The City’s Master Plan draft recommends this measure “to promote a distinct central business district to enhance Bangalore’s image as an international city”. The Core Ring Road, the official said, will be the City’s newest major transportation infrastructure after the Intermediate Ring Road, the Outer Ring Road and the Peripheral Ring Road.

City sub-centres

While the plan divides the City into five concentric rings or “belts” with area-wise land-use zones and associated zonal regulations, it also dwells on the development of city “sub-centres” to serve as activity nodes. These sub-centres are to be developed along the major radial or approach roads to Bangalore — Hosur Road, Tumkur Road, Chikballapur Road, Mysore Road, Old Madras Road and Whitefield Road. “The idea is to develop the identified sub-centres (designated areas along these roads) as commercial hubs. They will also have access through all forms transport — rail or road or metro. In some ways, they are to be developed as all-inclusive hubs, just as Gurgaon has been developed in relation to Delhi,” an official said. Overall, the City’s major areas have been divided into five classifications: the Core Area, Urban Redevelopment Area, Residential Areas, Industrial Activities Area, Green Areas.

The green belt or green areas have taken a beating over the last few years, with as much as 221 square km of the green belt having vanished from the earlier 742 sq km.



Hi-tech zone

A certain area has been designated a hi-tech zone — aimed at earmarking land for 3,75,000 new jobs related to IT, software, electronics, telecommunications and other knowledge industries and services sector by the year 2015.

The Master Plan aims at linking existing areas such as Electronic City and Whitefield with new areas reserved for high technology industrial purposes. Large developments (say, a major IT park) must allow housing to coexist with hi-tech uses in a campus format or a cluster — that is, evolving a house-office ratio in land-use so that local residents go to local offices and people don’t travel long distances to work.

Even as the debate on allowing trucks over 20 years old into the City continues, the plan recommends the setting up of truck terminals along major radial roads. These “terminals” will be equipped with warehousing and other facilities. The objective is to not allow trucks into the City during peak-hours, officials said.