Better plan needed for a real ring road

Better plan needed for a real ring road


The brighter side comes in the form of allocation to BMRCL, which should ensure some real progress on the ground. Care needs to be exercised in prioritizing or only selectively implementing from among the two stretches of the PRR. NHAI had flatly refused to take up its southern segment as it only amounts to wasteful expenditure of taxpayers’ money to build a road which is a couple of kilometres away from the NICE corridor.
This aspect has to be kept in mind and the northern segment taken up on a war-footing and may even be merged with NICE corridor as only then would Bangalore would get something with a semblance to a real ring road.
We must not forget that what goes by the name of Outer Ring Road is no more than piecing together of selected residential roads to form a loop that is non-existent between Mysore Road and Magadi Road and not even a four-laner between New BEL Road and Tumkur Road.
An important lesson from Gujarat, that the current government regards very highly, is the involvement of reputed academic centres of excellence, like how it employed the Centre for Environment Planning and Technology, Ahmedabad, in preparing its Bus Rapid Transit Corridor proposal, which earned it the highest funding under JNNURM in the country.
A similar Institute of Excellence conceived by BMRDA, which would work closely with the government, has been kept in cold storage. Formation of more sites will only land in the hands of speculators and will not add to the housing stock of Bangalore. DDA, New Delhi and CMDA, Chennai are now promoting only group housing projects.