Wait for Metro, this scene is going to change

Wait for Metro, this scene is going to change

Shilpa cb. bangalore

The BBMP is ten years too late, say tenants of KG Road who have seen the stretch turn from two-way to one-way. Now, it stands to lose its tree-cover, its age old character.
"They should have built a flyover here 10 years ago. Had it been completed by 2005, the Metro would not have given them trouble. Now, it is too late to come out with these concepts," says Manohar Kriplani, a textile businessman. Kriplani has been using KG Road since 1973. But these days, he finds driving around here too painful.
"Driving in bumper-to-bumper traffic requires switching one's foot from the clutch to the accelerator and back again," he says adding that displacing families for road widening is not right.
Another businessman, who's been around here for the last 50 years, echoes this view. "All this should have been done earlier. Now, there is no necessity. They can't keep widening the roads whenever there is a jam. There would be no end to it then," says he, requesting anonymity.
The Metro is already being planned on this stretch. There is also the Mono rail coming. So, there's no need to widen the road, he says.
This tenant of Alankar Pearl Plaza has seen BVK Iyengar Road, running parallel to KG Road, go from a single road to a double road. "It's been exactly 10 years since BVK Iyengar Road was made a double road. Now, they are out to disturb it again. Why? Will this stop, ever" he asks angrily.
The accident rate is quite high and the culprit is the divider, says R Hari Kumar, administrative officer of Alankar Pearl Plaza. "The divider has to be removed. About 150 people were killed after crashing their vehicles into it. More shopping complexes means a jump in the quantum of traffic and accident figures," he says.
"We can't say if road widening will help much. But if we are assured that widening will not damage our building in anyway, we have no objections," he says. It's doubtful whether adding 15 mts to the existing road would really make a difference in the long run, especially when hundreds of thousands of vehicles use this route to reach railway and bus stations.