Dedicated bus corridor along ORR planned

Dedicated bus corridor along ORR planned

Swathi Shivanand

BANGALORE: You would probably be ridiculed if you suggested that buses in the city could travel faster than your car. But if all goes well, the 36-km bus ride from Central Silk Board on Hosur Road to Hebbal flyover will take just an hour.

In a Rs. 400-crore joint venture, the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) and the Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) will start a Bus Rapid Transport (BRT) along the Outer Ring Road. The bus corridor will have two dedicated lanes along the six-lane ring road. The corridor will mostly be alongside the median, Commissioner of BDA M.K. Shankaralinge Gowda said on Wednesday. The corridor has been planned because of the real estate development between Central Silk Board and Hebbal. “About one lakh flats are coming up. We expect the corridor to be of use to over a million commuters,” Mr. Gowda said.

Even though the project is only on the drawing board, it seems to have run into problems as the dedicated corridor cannot be implemented if the large numbers of trucks using the ring road are not diverted.

Inter-state truck traffic has increased to about 20,000 a day from 8,000 in 1996. Most trucks use the ring road to avoid entering the city. A survey report being readied by RITES and Infrastructure Development Corporation-Karnataka may suggest measures to overcome the problem. The transport corporation will have specially-designed buses for the corridor as they will be ply at a higher speed than regular buses, said P.S. Sandhu, director, Security, Vigilance and Environment, BMTC.