New expressway to city?
The BBC is reporting that the Union Surface Transport Minister T R Baalu has cleared a new expressway to ease traffic congestion in the city. I couldn't find similar reports in the Indian media and the BBC doesn't say where in Bangalore this road is going to be built. And would someone explain how a expressway linking the city to some place else ease the horrendous traffic congestion in the central business district of the city?
New Bangalore road to beat jams
India's technology capital Bangalore is to get an $87m (£48m) toll motorway in order to tackle the city's growing congestion problem.
With the city established as India's main centre for outsourced Western businesses, jobs are now as plentiful as the traffic jams on its roads. The new road into a business zone is being partly paid for by its US and European tenants, including Siemens. They have long complained that traffic problems were harming business growth.
Boom city
India's federal minister for road transport, highways and shipping, TR Baalu, said the new 9km (5.5 mile) road, and a number of separate carriageway-widening projects, would go a long way to resolving the transport infrastructure grievances.
The new expressway will open in April 2007, Mr Baalu said, and will be 33% paid for by the business tenants. "These projects will ease congestion and support the growth of the industry," he said. Many US and European corporate giants, including Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, and Tesco, have in recent years exported operations such as software development and customer support to Bangalore, attracted by low wage costs and cheap property prices.
The city, capital of the southern state of Karnataka, now accounts for some 32% of India's $12.5bn annual revenues from overseas outsourcing. After years of rapid growth Bangalore has a population of 6.5 million and 1.95 million cars.
posted by The Bangalorean @ 9/27/2004 07:52:00 PM
10 comments
10 Comments:
And would someone explain how a expressway linking the city to some place else ease the horrendous traffic congestion in the central business district of the city?The expressway wont but this surely will...
Richmond, Residency will be one-ways
BANGALORE: The Traffic police is seriously considering converting Residency and Richmond Roads into one-ways as congestion on these roads has reached its peak.
Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) Chandrashekhar told this website’s newspaper that modalities of introducing the one-way system on these roads were being worked out. Traffic, on both these roads, has increased exponentially in recent years.
Most of the Residency Road traffic jams are caused during school timings when parents, guardians and drivers who come to either pick up or drop their wards to school, park their vehicles on the road in front of the two Bishop Cotton schools. On Richmond Road, the bottleneck is before the Baldwin Girls’ School.
That apart, these roads are too narrow to support two-way traffic, given the present volume. While movement of traffic would be allowed from Richmond Circle towards Opera Junction on Residency Road, vehicles on Richmond Road would be allowed only from Vallera Junction towards Richmond Circle. As a result, traffic would be realigned atop the Richmond Circle flyover, which will be two-way.
While movement of traffic would remain unchanged from the approach ramps on K.H. Road and Mission Road, there will be changes in the flow on the down ramp. Flow in the direction of Residency Road will remain unchanged, the down ramp on Richmond Road will be reversed to accommodate the new one-way.
It may be recalled that former city police commissioner H T Sangliana had recommended that the Richmond Circle flyover be made two-way. However, the police are still working on ironing out the new system.
This only proves that flyovers are a bad idea. You are stuck with them and can't change anything about them. Just how will the Richmond circle flyover take two-way traffic? Traffic will reduce to a further crawl if they attempt anything like that. The down ramps on Residency Road and Richmond road can be turned into an up ramp and down ramp but what about the present up ramps on Mission Road and KH (Double) Road? They are aligned to be up ramps and are too narrow to accomodate two way traffic.
While movement of traffic would remain unchanged from the approach ramps on K.H. Road and Mission Road, there will be changes in the flow on the down ramp. Flow in the direction of Residency Road will remain unchanged, the down ramp on Richmond Road will be reversed to accommodate the new one-way.This struck me as funny... maybe I am missing something... like a ramp somewhere...If KH road and mission road are going to remain up ramps where are the vehicles getting on to the flyover from richmond road going to get off? The only option is residency road again. But AFAIK the ramp is not aligned for making that turn into residency road...
You are right, the down ramp (when turned into an up ramp) on Richmond Road is not aligned for vehicles to turn on to the down ramp on Residency Road. Besides why would any one want to do that. They would want to get off on KH Road. The only solution I can think of is to retain the up ramps on Mission Road and KH Road and make the Lalbagh Fort Road (stretch of road below the flyover between Richmond Circle to Olympic Sports junction) a one way leading into KH Road. However the problem with this suggestion is that the down ramp on Richmond Road will remain untilized.
Perhaps the traffic police expects us to jump off the flyover on to KH Road.
I hope they aren't thinking of making the up ramp on KH Road two-way. Nothing could be more idiotic than that. The up ramp can't even take the one-way traffic presently. Just one BMTC bus crawling up the ramp can hold up the rest of the traffic behind it for ages. Two buses simply can't pass side by side on that ramp.
IMO... Only 2 things can be done...
1) Close the ramp on Richmond road... If this one-way works out they can spend tax rupees undoing that ramp...
2) Use the mobile flyover technology that BDA is experimenting with to add a down ramp on KH road...
Dont know which one is less expensive...
What is this mobile flyover technology?
I don't think expense would be a big deterrent. The Builder-Politician lobby would only be too happy to throw more good money after bad and pocket a good bit of it in the bargain.
Its the feasibility of any structural changes to the flyover that is in question. And the additional ordeal of disruptions due to another round of construction activity.
http://bangalorebuzz.blogspot.com/2004/09/in-conversation-with-new-bda-chief.html
Why do flyovers get delayed? How do you propose to avoid delays?
There is no particular reason for delays in completion of flyovers. In the conventional flyover, civil works take a lot of time depending on the length of the flyover. In addition, this also causes immeasurable inconvenience to the public. Shifting of utilities takes its toll in terms of time and money. To overcome these difficulties, BDA is toying with the idea of mobile flyovers. Mobile flyovers can be erected and opened for public within a matter of a few days and innumerable such examples are there in many European countries.
:-)
I was hoping you would know how this thing actually works.
:))
Nope... but looks like somebody in UK is peddling something like this already...
http://www.mabey.co.uk/johnson/mbs_05.htm
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