The 'Maze' made good reading. It reminded me of an article abt the auto-rickshaw that appeared sometime back in TOI, which was something like this : Roads in India defy order & logic of any kind. The Indian road is mostly a dirt track & provides an avenue for hawking, parking, garbage dumping, etc. & struggles to attempt to provide a corridor for transportation amidst the chaos & anarchy. And at its heart, playing a key role is the Auto-Rickshaw, a three-wheeler commonly referred to as “Auto”, the only such being of its kind, perhaps in the universe. The “Auto” does indeed seem so naturally & effortlessly Indian on all counts – by appearance, by its noise, lack of road manners, pollution & its undisciplined & unpredictable movements. The auto is the Indian urban rat, a wily, crafty creature that dribbles its way through the Indian urban sewer. The auto deals with the road on a second-by-second basis, recognizing that the Indian road is the abode of constantly changing circumstances. Twisting & turning all along its way through traffic, chaos & mankind in no particular order, every inch of territory on the Indian road is fought for & gained not by courage but by guile & cunning. The auto defies the idea that the road is a straight line but sees it as a chessboard, contemplating its next move based on obstacles on it’s path & options available, however crooked they may seem. In many ways, the auto is perfectly at home in twisty by-lanes. ‘Gullies’ & ‘Mohallas’ seem like the perfectly natural neighborhood for the auto. The auto mimics their lack of linearity with “Made for each other” ease. In fact, even on straight roads the auto contrives somehow to avoid the sense of linearity by sheer habit as it zigzags & wriggles along, as it makes progress. The auto, like most other things in India, always seeks to subvert order & insinuate itself wherever & whenever it can – it is common to see an auto climbing up a footpath or divider & get ahead of other more patient road vehicles. One can commonly sight an auto going in the opposite direction on a one way road, or even through a stop or red signal, appearing to go unnoticed & without ruffling any feathers. The auto also brings to us a vastly enhanced sense of sub-atomic distances by intruding so close to the vehicle ahead that limits seem not just to have been tested, but to have vanished & distances, spaces & gaps seem to have disappeared, & yet, miraculously, no contact was made. The auto, with the least effective wheel suspensions, is also a vehicle that transmits the topography of the Indian road into the passengers’ innards, converting travel over road bumps, potholes, debris, pebbles, stones, etc. into an efficient digestive experience. The key to understanding the auto is to understand its design. The principle governing its design is perhaps the overwhelming view of compromise being not a lesser choice, but an inevitable & ideal choice. All else be damned, but cost has to be minimum – even, miniscule. Vehicle noise & some air pollution are quite natural & acceptable on the Indian road, as long as they don’t immediately damage ears or lungs. The speed the auto is capable of traveling has been carefully chosen – It is significantly faster than a cycle, but lesser than that of cars or other wastefully expensive means of transportation. If this were looked at from the reality of Indian roads, it travels at the “ideal speed”. Take the case of its suspension – this too is self-limiting for its speed – if the auto travels too fast, one’s insides would mimic that of a violent food processor. The speed of the engine is thus made slower, but cheaper & in line with the Indian road & Indian circumstances. The engine seems to have been perfected to the ultimate & is versatile & very efficient to serve it’s purpose. It can use all kinds of adulterated fuel, even adulterated kerosene or adulterated diesel. And it can run for indefinite periods without lubricating oil & /or cooling water. What’s more, the auto can also be used as a mobile rest house for overnights at remote locations where it has ended the day in its wanderings. The auto is a shanty on wheels & represents the idea of personal transportation promising to offer protection against the elements, without offering any guarantees. In a larger sense, the auto accurately captures the “hybrid mongrel“ nature of Indian towns. It also affirms the Indian belief that life is hard, but there can always be a way around it. And circumstances will compel you to yield to trusting an auto to take you where you want to go – Sort of.

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to a post Naveen. Nice essay on the three wheeler.

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I moved to a house on the ORR between KR Puram and Marathahalli some 4 years back and have been using this stretch (covered in the video) for all this while. This has become in my opinion the No:1 pain point for anybody getting from whitefield/mahadevapura to the central districts. To add to this confusion are a couple more points: 1. Just after the 2 lane railway crossing bottleneck at beneganahalli is the entrance to Pai Layout on the right. Even though there is a big no right turn sign, everyday, during peak hours, you will find vehicles piling up to cut right across the traffic from whitefield/mahadevapura towards MG Road. 2. The stretch from where the cable bridge starts to the KR Puram station, the planned 4 lane is actually only 2 lanes as you have one lane occupied by Lorries and Trucks which have been parked indiscriminately and another lane eaten by vehicles who travel in the wrong direction though this is a one way! I would bargain even for a corrupt traffic cop, who can take all the bribe in the world from the offenders, but help free up these 2 lanes! Anyway, nice to see that someone posted this! I wonder if the person who represents this area in the assembly actually stays in this area. I am sure if he did, he would have been stuck in this mess so many times that he would muster the political will to do something about it!!

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not sure about this..but I did not see trucks..those long trailer ones included..on the ORR around KR puram for the second day in a row! Can anyone confirm if the trucks have been stopped from entering this road during the peak hours? My ITPL ride from benniganahalli took me 15 min flat!

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The following is a reply to a complaint to the NH authorities on the Benniganahalli underbridge and future plans to widen it.

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Good reading. And another interesting point here is that to go towards center of the city from the north side of the ORR, there is no right turn facility. One has to go towards K R Puram and then take a U-turn in the messy traffic :-( Or go through the narrow lanes of Kasthurinagar and NGEF.

Once the airport expressway comes up, I cannot imagine how the traffic coming from airport to Indiranagar/Koramangala can be managed..

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This mail from the govt is a good update..atleast something is happening!

What I dont understand is why did the railways put their hands up for widening the bridge and asked the NH guys to do it and also why this late? the latest mail from railways is dated 24-april-2008! What were they all doing all these days!? eating kadalekai?

Benniganahalli bridge is one thing..if this is  fixed its good but what will happen is that all the traffic would pile up under the hanging bridge OR rather the approach to the hanging bridge! Whos working on that?

Analyzing that bottleneck..there are many reasons for blockage:

1. Pedestrians from the train station( need a magic pedestrian underpass desperately here)

2. U turn under the hanging bridge. This needs to be stopped and the turn should be taken under the next ORR bridge which is about 100 mts

3. Trucks on ORR..hope this will get reduced with NICE PRR getting completed

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Some where in CTTP it was mentioned that - the ORR traffic has to be separated on this stretch by constructing a bypass for the existing ORR from Beninghanahally flyover to ORR close to the salem railway line over bridge parallel to the railway line. May be in another decade plus ;)

Ramesh

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thanks ramesh for the initiative and sharing it with us. it also looked like a more earnest response than what syed's letter got. blrsri, this should not be a surprise. when was the last time you ever heard/saw/experienced the railways do anything proactively for the city? their mandate is trains and only trains. they somehow are not at all connected with the communities that they are involved in. even when their property interferes with the flow of the rest of community. remember that foot bridge across tracks people requested from swr at y'pura?

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It is an Online Grievance Redress mechanism in Goverment. The above reply from the PWD was for a grievnace filed through the above portal. I was sceptical when I got the link from an email, but to my surprise it worked!!! They forward the recieved compaints to the respective departments for actions, the follow up mechanism is doubtful because railways are sitting idle on other 2 comlaints against them. I have proofs from the portal guys showing that they have forwarded it to Ministry of Railways. Any how a good initiative by the goverment.

Applause for Indian Goverment.                                                                 Ramesh.

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there are few things that need to be done here..land to be acquired and road widened..part of land belongs to railways(having old quarters) and part with a college belonging to a church..without any construction..

These can be acquired and the road widened.

and then we need the underpass for pedestrians accessing the railway stn.

[flickr-photo:id=2555231255,size=m]

The solution is not at all difficult..it just needs commitment!

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Ok..looks like some work is underway to widen this bridge and then what?

All the vehicles will get stuck at the next junction under the hanging bridge!

This bottleneck has to be taken care of or else it will be wasted effort if they widen the b.halli bridge alone!

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Widening the bridge alone would not be a wasted effort. It will ease traffic woes for folks traveling from whitefield/ITPL and ORR.

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True..the traffic is always worse on the opposite lane moving from hanging bridge into city..However widening the bridge might not solve everything..

This is because the current situation made worse because of the intersection right after the bridge. There are two major problems at this junciton..

1. Pedestrian traffic, crossing the road to reach either side

2. Bad roads for turning right towards hanging bridge from nagavarapalya main road

Solution:

1. Provide magic underpass for pedestrians

2. Right turn banned for traffic on nagavarapalya mn road and instead the traffic should be directed to big bazar side and provided a magic underpass u-turn.

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