Loony ideas abound

Glide over elevated Hosur Road
The Times of India

Bangalore: If planners have their way, rain or shine, Bangaloreans will not even set foot on the dreaded Hosur Road: The entire road, from Vellara Junction almost up to the Tamil Nadu border, will be elevated!

The planning is presently in two stages: The initial proposal of a nine-km road on stilts from Central Silk Board that splits into two — down right to Electronic City and straight down near the Karnataka-Tamil Nadu border — has been in the air from the last one year.

This has got solidified into a concrete construction bid, which will be formally awarded by National Highway Authority of India (NHAI) to a private Hyderabad-based consortium in a week’s time.

“Planning is in an advanced stage. The private consortium will be given six months time to achieve financial closure. By March 2006, work should have begun,’’ NHAI sources told The Times of India.

Pre-construction work like land acquisition and shifting of utilities including water pipes and power lines, has taken off. While 50 per cent of land needed is cleared, NHAI has notified the remaining 19 hectares (46.95 acres), with the final notification expected mid-November.

The second part of the ‘elevated’ plan is a new one, mooted by IT captains to the state government: A a six-km road on stilts from Vellara Junction up to Central Silk Board. Infrastructure Development Corporation (Karnataka) Limited (iDECK) has undertaken a traffic feasibility study to look into the viability and effectiveness.

The proposal is to be cleared after the empowered committee on infrastructure headed by chief secretary B K Das examines the iDECK report, expected in a fortnight. “iDECK is doing a point to point study for an elevated road from Raj Bhavan to Peenya and Hebbal. This will give us an idea of the kind of traffic involved and extent of decongestion in core areas.

This will be applied to the Hosur Road and another 12-km elevated Airport Road proposals,’’ infrastructure secretary Vinay Kumar explained.
After this, the two stages of the Hosur elevated road have to be integrated to ensure easy traffic flow on the road. Both roads are planned as toll roads that will largely cater to the through traffic.

But planners are jubilant: Once plans are in place, the elevated road will be a boon to the IT sector. From Vellara Junction to Electronic City, a journey that takes over an hour, is expected to be done in barely 20 minutes.