A City without trees?

A City without trees?
MP
Is Bangalore headed towards a treeless landscape ? In a city which was once known for its tall fern trees, people are increasingly installing artificial Christmas trees during the yuletide season.

But what is depressing is the news that the City is likely to lose most of its trees in the road-widening exercise.

A few days ago the Chief Engineer (Road Widening) of the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike called constituents of Hasiru Usiru for a meeting on the request of the BBMP Tree Officer.The agenda was to review the proposed (but actually ongoing) road widening schemes in Bangalore.

Currently there are 10 roads proposed for widening and re-engineering, and there are at least 30 more that will be worked on similarly. Put together, these roads form the core streets of Bangalore.

Almost all are well canopied and their streetscapes are what anyone familiar with Bangalore would characterise as the quintessential aspects of the city. With these proposals to widen roads the face of Bangalore will literally be transformed. From a cursory review of their plans it was clear that there is not much attention paid to details such as pedestrian zones, regulated traffic, care for the elderly and the infirm, the cause of children, and the importance of travel safety.

The focus is almost entirely based on de-congesting Bangalore's messy traffic, and ensuring the core zones of Electronics city and the new Airport are accessible.

In the meeting the Chief Engineer did confirm that the one way streets have failed, and thereby the move is now to allow for bidirectional traffic flows. The concentration is on reenginnering traffic intersections to allow for this and hopefully limit congestion points.

Dr Subbarayan Prasanna, Urban and Regional Planner and formerly Dean at IIM-B, representatives of the NGOs and others participated in the proceedings.

There is a need to rationalise their proposals and ensure that such widening schemes were sensitive to all road users needs and also to the quiet sentinels of Bangalore's heritage - its charming trees. According to sources, in accordance with the designs of the Engineering Division, hundreds of trees will be cut down. You could delete most of the canopied streets in core Bangalore. The Tree Officer is witholding permission to fell these trees even as some are already being 'translocated' — an action that is illegal per the Tree Act — on some streets, sources add.