Traffic chaos on MG Road

Traffic chaos on MG Road
Wednesday July 16 2008 12:57 IST

Hemanth C S and Monica Jha | ENS

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BANGALORE: Scores of vehicles piling up on the city's busiest road has turned worse with the slow progress of Namma Metro project.

Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL), the implementing agency of metro rail project, has blocked a huge part of M G Road for its ground work, leaving only 30 per cent of the road for traffic movement.

Started over a year ago, the work on M G Road, which is part of Reach One of the project (Byappanahalli to Chinnaswamy Stadium), has achieved very little progress at ground zero.

Traffic experts pointed out that at many parts of M G Road, the road available for traffic movement is about 30 per cent and with the metro project taking away the major part, the remaining is allotted for parking.

Vehicular movement almost comes to a standstill on certain stretches of the road.

The stretch between Trinity Circle and Mayo Hall is the most congested. Similarly, for vehicles heading from Chinnaswamy Stadium towards Trinity Circle, the main bottleneck is the Brigade Road junction.

The reason given for the delay in work in this corridor is the lack of coordination among contractors engaged by BMRCL. The BMRCL has attributed the slow pace of work to the 'mega project of utility shifting' and technicalities involved in the work.

BMRCL officials said: "Shifting BESCOM and BWSSB utilities is a mega project and will take a lot of time, especially due to need of co-ordination among various civic agencies.

Contracts for all utility shifting have been awarded. The pure technical nature of the work is delaying the speed and progress of the project."