CMH Road users having a harrowing time

CMH Road users having a harrowing time

Govind D. Belgaumkar

Police have diverted traffic to facilitate work on Metro project

# Many people were unaware of the traffic diversion
# Police say advance notice on it was given



INCONVENIENCE: People have been put to hardship because of the prohibition of vehicular movement on CMH Road from Adarsha cinema end in view of the Metro Rail work. — Photo: Bhagya Prakash K.

BANGALORE: Those who have to drive by CMH Road have been having a harrowing time since Thursday following diversion of traffic to facilitate work related to the Rs. 6,400-crore Metro Rail project.

The police are disallowing entry of vehicles from the Adarsha cinema end till Shanthi Sagar junction. Most drivers said they were not aware of any decision of the police to divert the traffic.

And, this is just preparatory work. The Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Ltd. (BMRCL) is getting the service lines shifted to facilitate smooth erection of pillars for the viaduct of the Metro. The water and sewage lines are being shifted at present. The work is expected to get over by the end of the month.

The BMRCL has already shifted the utility service lines — water, electricity supply and telephone cables — on M.G. Road. This was done without affecting the traffic as the service lines were on the periphery of the road or were under the promenade.

People using the CMH Road were exasperated that traffic has been diverted without adequate notice. A senior citizen, who came with his wife in a car grumbled to this correspondent: "I would have avoided this road had I known this before."

A couple who planned to have dinner at their favourite restaurant on the road on Thursday night were forced to go home and eat leftovers thanks to the diversion and the resultant traffic jam. The rain didn't help either.

The policeman at the Adarsha junction was seen diverting the traffic to the nearby narrow lane adjoining the open drain on Friday. Many autorickshaw drivers and two-wheeler drivers who took the adjoining bylanes, encountered traffic jams that were made worse by haphazard parking of vehicles.

Excavations to shift the lines have occupied almost half the width on CMH road. That, explained a supervisor, was because some of the utility lines were at the centre of the road. Besides, such work involved digging big pits which invariably entailed a "spill over."

DCP (Traffic East) M.A. Saleem told The Hindu that the police had given notice of traffic diversion plans on the CMH Road to newspapers over a month ago when the preliminary work started.

Mr. Saleem said the actual work on the Metro — scheduled to commence from Sunday on the promenade from Kumble Circle to the M.G. Road junction with Brigade Road — would not need any traffic diversion initially. Later, they would be announced well ahead of schedule when work was taken up beyond the junction. At the Byappanahalli end, work would be carried out on the private land to begin with and it called for no traffic diversion. The BMRCL had no plans to start work on Swami Vivekananda Road, he said.