Eyesores beneath the flyovers

Eyesores beneath the flyovers
Monday May 21 2007 00:00 IST

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BANGALORE: Flyovers are considered symbols of a city’s growth and status. But the roads beneath the flyovers in Bangalore are eyesores and breeding grounds of pests.

On Mysore Road and Lingarajapuram, for instance, the flyovers have helped ease the knotty traffic, but the road below them give the motorists a bumpy ride. It is not just potholes, space under the flyovers are often found a convenient dumping ground where rotting garbage and heaps of debris provide comfortable home to myriads of noxious insects. Horrible stench pervades these areas round-the-clock.

What space left after the garbage-and-debris piles is promptly occupied by hawkers who station themselves on their carts and sell their wares unmindful of the smell and flies. Motorists and pedestrians have a hard time crossing this hurdle.

Commuters are unhappy as the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) turn a blind eye to the roads beneath the flyovers in the city. At the city market, the situation was bad a couple of years ago where squatters appropriated much of the space along the median under the flyovers. They have now been removed. Today, the ramps at Chamarajpet and Cottonpet are being used a dumping grounds of wastes.

“The BBMP must maintain both flyovers and the sarroundings”, says Nithika K, a student living nearby. “Such patches create a bad impression on the minds of visitors.”

“The civic agencies are responsible for the maintenance of flyovers and the roads beneath them. They can’t escape the blame,” said Shreehari H, a commuter.