Smooth ride down Hosur Road soon

Smooth ride down Hosur Road soon
New roads promise to make commuting on Hosur Road easier
The Times of India


The dedicated zone for IT, the Electronic City, is in the news since a couple of years, for a wrong reason. The traffic en route to Electronic City, i.e. Hosur Road is chaotic. Ask any commuter on this route on the status of traffic, and he fumes. Today, it takes almost one and half hours to reach Electronic City from the Silk Board junction in peak hours.
However, all is not bad. The under-construction road on stilts, PWD's project to develop an arterial road and Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprise's (NICE) peripheral road are progressing, promising much relief for commuters on this stretch. As the four-lane Hosur Road is the only approach road to Electronic City, traffic from all over the city converges at the Silk Board junction to move ahead.
These projects will reduce the pressure on Hosur Road once through. The elevated road will take traffic moving towards Electronic City from the Silk Board junction. The PWD developed road will bring connectivity between Whitefield and Sarjapur Road, and Electronic City. NICE's peripheral road will connect Mysore Road, Kanakapura Road and Bannerghatta Road with Electronic City.
A recent traffic survey carried out to study the traffic density on Hosur Road reveals a whopping 1.20 lakh passenger car units (PCU) on a normal day. As many as 10,000 trucks and 10,000 buses pass through Bommanahalli every day. Peripheral Road
It's a six-lane access-controlled super-way all the way between Tumkur Road and Hosur Road. The work on the 75-metre wide 41-km Peripheral Road connecting Bangalore-Pune Road (NH 4), Magadi Road, Mysore Road, Kanakapura Road, Bannergatta Road and Hosur Road (NH 7) is on. And the implementing authorities state that almost 85 percent of the road work is over except a railway over bridge near Tumkur Road and a 400-metre stretch near Gottigere (Bannerghatta Road).
This peripheral road will offload almost 50 percent of traffic from Hosur Road as people commuting to Electronic City from south and west of Bangalore can use it. The peripheral road doesn't have any stoppages, and is of six lanes with service roads all the way. The distance b e t we e n Mysore Road and Hosur Road via The Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor Project (BMICP) peripheral road is a mere 20 km.
Speaking on the project, NICE Managing Director Ashok Keny says, "the peripheral road between Mysore Road and Hosur Road is crucial as it easily takes the burden off Hosur Road. Apart from reducing the distance, the traffic volume will be distributed. This will benefit people commuting through the Silk Board junction, and from the south and west parts of the city, to the Electronic City. There is a hitch which has halted the opening of the road. The state government is holding up a small piece of land near Gottigere. This 400-metre stretch is not transferred to us because the government wants us build a bridge over the lake rather than taking the road along the lake. The government should sort out the issue and give us land as soon as possible as it benefits thousands of commuters". Once this stretch is opened, the traffic scene on Hosur Road will never be bad again.
Elevated road
The work on the ambitious nine-km elevated road from Hosur Road to Electronic City is being carried out round-the-clock. This project will make commuting to the knowledge hub a pleasure. Currently, the stilts are being put up on Hosur Road and the project will be completed within a maximum time span of 24 months. It will cost Rs 450 crores. This will be a four-lane 'superstructure' - one of its kind. It will start from Hosur Road at the Silk Board junction and go straight into the heart of Electronic City. For the benefit given to them, the IT firms in Electronic City will bear 33 percent of the construction costs, while the remaining will be shared between the Centre, the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) and the State Government.
The project will also include four subways for the heavy pedestrian traffic to cross at Bommanahalli, Garvebhavipalya, Kudlu and Singasandra junctions. Hosur Road will not be dug up for the construction of the subways. A 'box-pushing' technology where the subway is tunneled in from the sides will be adopted.
Arterial roads
The Karnataka Public Works Department (KPWD) is carrying out a massive and comprehensive plan to develop some of the crucial arterial roads in the peripheral areas of the city. One sector that is going to benefit from the project is Hosur Road. Under the project, three corridors of roads - east, south, and west will be developed. And Hosur Road sector falls under east.
The eastern corridor will involve a cost of Rs 27.45 crores and cover upto 45 km and four roads. This corridor road starts from NH 7 (Hosur Road) and joins NH 4 via Sarjapur, Bommasandra, Varthur, Whitefield, and Kadugodi. The existing road network comprises singlelane, intermediate-lane and two-lane roads, and they are to be widened to two-lane for the entire stretch. This project will ensure connectivity between Whitefield, Sarjapur Road and Electronic City.