Fingers crossed, B’lore awaits rains

Fingers crossed, B’lore awaits rains

CNN-IBN


Bangalore: Like Mumbai, Bangalore too was deluged by rains last year and while Bangaloreans are lucky the monsoons haven't quite hit them yet, the city may well be deluged if it does.

The city has seen a 3.2 per cent average annual increase in population in the last five years and more than 800 additional vehicles add to the clutter on its roads every single day.

"Bangalore is not planned for this amount of traffic. It's good for 7 to 8 lakh vehicles because roads remain the same, narrow congested ones, whereas buildings and industries have grown to an exorbitant level" Prof M N Sreehari, advisor to government, traffic and Transportation Engineering says.

Bangalore grows rapidly, but that has happened with little civic planning. Urban planners bemoan the lack of planning and inadequate infrastructure in the city.

"The solution is to open out more areas around bangalore. It involves building up better roads," Mohandas Pai, chief financial officer, Infosys says.

India's IT hub had witnessed severe waterlogging, traffic congestion due to heavy rains last year. People in Bangalore continue to blame the municipal authorities for the October 24 floods.

"The authorities knew that the drains had to be broader but they didn't build it like that," says one resident.

"There is tremendous urban sprawl in Bangalore, something which I haven't seen in any other city. The main reason is the planning decisions taken for the Comprehensive Development Plan (CDP) 1985-1995. What they allowed was a higher FAR outside the city which is less dense and allowed lesser FAR in the heart of the city," urban planner George Kuruvilla, says.

Like every other city, Bangalore too has a Master Plan. But urban planners say that there is a huge gap between plans on paper and the reality on the ground.

So unless the Master Plan 2015 is implemented well, it will remain, like its predecessors - an expensive government exercise.