Highs and lows of city humps

Highs and lows of city humps
By: Madhusudan Maney Date: 2010-08-09 Place: Bangalore




Badly located and ill-designed road humps continue to be a nuisance for motorists in the city despite the Home Minister's letter to BBMP

Despite Home Minister V S Acharya writing to the Bangalore Traffic Police on removing them, thousands of unscientific road humps are still unattended by the BBMP.

It's been more than 20 days but the BBMP is still to remove the unscientific road humps. There are more than 80 per cent unscientific road humps that are yet to be removed.

The few humps that have been removed have turned into potholes, which is more dangerous for motorists.


Most of the humps in the city were asked for by residents based on accidents which had happened earlier.


Bone crackers

The city is infamous for notorious road humps that are ill planned, poorly designed and badly located. Motorists complain that road humps, instead of being speed breakers, are acting as 'head breakers and bone crackers'.

According to experts, 80 per cent of road humps in the city are against the Indian Road Congress norms. Most of the humps were asked for by residents based on accidents happened in their areas earlier.

The lakhs of rupees that were spent on laying these will go down the drain now that they are going to be removed.

Roads damaged

The BBMP, with the help of city traffic police, is yet to identify the ones that are to be removed. Some of them have been identified and removed, but have damaged the roads in the process.

An executive engineer from BBMP said, "They are being removed at the ward level. We have asked for reports from each ward which are expected shortly.

The Traffic Police had given a list of 398 unscientific road humps six months ago, of which, around 150 have been removed and re-laid scientifically. We are still coordinating with the traffic police."

"Road humps were removed in many places, with the help of machines but they turned into potholes. When they are removed manually, the roads do not suffer so much damage," said a BBMP official.