Highway to hell: Expressway reduces traffic to a crawl

Highway to hell: Expressway reduces traffic to a crawl

Lorries ferrying goods to the city add to miseries on service roads of NH4

Soumya Menon. Bangalore

It's become a highway to hell. Motorists plying on National Highway No 4, or Tumkur Road as it is known, are having a harrowing time as the stretch from Jalahalli Cross to Hesarghatta Cross has been closed to traffic to facilitate speedy execution of work on the expressway to Tumkur.
With vehicles now being allowed only on service roads on either side of the highway, the pace of traffic has been reduced to a virtual crawl. The only relief is that the service roads are closed to 4,000-odd inter-state lorries that took the road every day. These lorries have been diverted.
Lorries delivering goods to the city are still plying on the service roads and will also be diverted soon.
Abhijith R Swamy, a businessman and resident of Peenya, said it takes at least two hours for him to reach Malleswaram from Peenya now. "There are lorries on the service roads and since BMTC and KSRTC buses also ply on the same roads, they get gridlocked," he said.
Another commuter, Prateek Pawar, a private company employee and resident of Yeshwantpur, said that he is getting stuck in Peenya-bound traffic for several hours every day. "There's no alternative. Traffic is so slow moving that people have to start at least two to three hours early to reach their destinations on time,'' he said.
Additional commissioner of police (Traffic), Praveen Sood said the only solution to ease the traffic movement on the service roads is to divert the goods lorries too. "In the next two weeks, we will also device alternative routes for these lorries,'' he said.