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Silk Board Junction: Traffic flow suggestions

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aravindas - 23 January, 2011 | Bangalore | Hosur Road | ORR | NH7 | Silk Board | suggestion | Transportation | Infrastructure | Flyovers and underpasses

Hello Experts, I am a resident of Bangalore since my birth.  I have a great passion and hope towards Bangalore. With lot of infrastructure projects in progress/completed these days, (Elevate Express way to Electronic City, Elevated Express Way on Tumkur Road, Proposed signal free corridor from Hebbal to Yelahanka, New section of ORR from Mysore Road to Magadi Road, Alternate connectivity to Airport, Namma Metro, etc...) the Bangalore traffic will be much better in coming years.

However what interest me more is the construction of underpasses and flyovers on ORR from Silk Board towards Marathalli, as I use this stretch on a daily basis to travel to my workplace.  With construction work progressing pretty quickly, I guess all the flyovers/underpasses will be ready for traffic in a year or two ( I want to compliment BBMP and the government for quick progress of construction activities on this road.) But what worries me the most is, the condition of the silkboard junction, once Matathalli to Silk Board becomes signal free.  I can say with certainty that, entire traffic will get piled up in the Silk Board junction.   The only alternative is making silkboard junction signal free (Like Domlur flyover).  However there are few issues:

  1. The big storm water drain next to the Hosur Road pose a big problem to any construction projects in the vicinity
  2. The construction of Clove Loop ramps/flyovers would consume lot of time and Taxpayer dollars
  3. Further, any construction in the junction would make the situation chaotic in the already choked junction.

With this in mind, I would like to propose an alternate solution.  I am sure this would have struck to you guys before.  I would like to know all the comments from the experts in this forum.

Prerequisites:

  1. No parking to be allowed on/near the intersection or the service roads approaching either of the main roads
  2. Bus Stand and Auto stands to be moved at least a ½ kilometer from the intersection
  3. Some land need to be acquired near the intersection (Very minimal)
  4. No right turn will be allowed from ORR to Hosur Road from either directions.

Here is the current traffic flow pattern in the CSB Junction (I apologize for the poor drawing skills)


With some additional land acquisition on the service road, I would propose the traffic pattern to change as below.

If you compare both the pictures side-by-side, one would notice that the additional land required is very minimal and can be acquired as there are no big businesses immediately next to the intersection (except Silk Board itself)

The proposed traffic pattern is as below. (all the merging points are marked in red both on the illustration above and in the description below)

  • Traffic from BTM going towards Forum would turn left at 1 and merge with Hosur Road traffic at 2
  • Traffic from BTM going towards Hosur would turn left at 3 and merge with merge with Hosur road traffic after making a U turn at 4
  • Traffic from Marathalli going towards Hosur would turn left at 5 and merge with Hosur Road Traffic at 6
  • Traffic from Marathalli going towards Forum would turn left at 7 and merge with Hosur Road traffic at 8
  • Traffic from Hosur going towards BTM would turn left at 9 and merge with ORR at point A
  • Traffic from Hosur going towards Marathalli would take a U turn at point B and turn left on to ORR at point C
  • Traffic from Forum Mall going towards Marathalli would turn left at point D and merge with ORR at point E
  • Traffic from Forum Mall going towards BTM would take a U turn at point F and turn left on to ORR at point F

The major advantage of this approach is

  1. No additional construction is required (except minimal land acquisition).  It involves only widening the service road and re-orienting the traffic
  2. As there is no construction, the project can be completed pretty quickly
  3. The project cost will be minimal as there is no additional construction
  4. The project can be implemented without disturbing the existing traffic during the implementation phase.


Here is the same shown of Google Maps
Existing –


 

Proposed

As I am not an expert in this area, I won’t be surprised if this not a feasible option.    I would love to know your expert comments.

Thank you,
Arainda

 

 

COMMENTS

 2 grade seperated loops have

idontspam - 24 January, 2011 - 08:58

 2 grade seperated loops have been recommended here

Prerequisites

Naveen - 24 January, 2011 - 03:28

For SilkBoard or any other junction, the prerequisites would be as follows :

1) Safe pedestrian crossing facilities, even if it means traffic halts.

2) Bus halts, taxi halts, auto halts must neccessarily be as close to the intersection as possible for facilitating passenger access and movement. If space is available, such PT infrastructure can be designed adjacent to the moving lanes of traffic to allow for free flows. However, priority must always be for public transport and pedestrian movement, & never exclusively for fast flow of vehicles.

Make sense, one technical flaw to correct

silkboard - 24 January, 2011 - 04:09

Nice detailed post, with pictures, great job, rated the post  5 stars! Flow suggestions make sense. What is very interesting is that work is perhaps needed to make loops B (u-turn on from from ORR East to Hosur Road South) and 4 (Hosur Road North to ORR East) work.

But, the problem is - end of Loop B (joining ORR East) happens just before start of loop 4 (leaving ORR East). There would be cross-flow (inter weaving), and more space (road length) is needed to get this cross-flow be self-managed.

Now, since you can't acquire land to the West of flyover, you would have to acquire some on the East of Flyover (where servie roads begin on ORR East).

So in summation

  • You would have to move point 3 as close to point E as possible. And point E would have to be a bit further east.
  • Similar changs needed for ORR West traffic to self manage the similar cross flow.

Would be great if you can post the 'corrected' pictures.

Post this, we can develop the ped-cross and bus bay locations. May have to correct the loops to provide premium location to these critical amenities.

excellent job

naveen_blr - 24 January, 2011 - 08:53

Innovative idea to utilize the existing resources.

There is another solution here. There is some execuvation going on just left from Madivala towards Silkboard/ORR. A whole new Clover leaf Flyover and then one can join the roads .No problem to the current traffic.

Another suggestion which should be implemented to all roads in Bengaluru - Free left to all major junction.

-Atleast if implemented to the ORRs will help a lot of free traffic moment.

 

Regards,

Naveen

Naveen, correct, but before that, another thing necessary

dvsquare - 24 January, 2011 - 12:19

Naveen, you are correct in saying that -

"Another suggestion which should be implemented to all roads in Bengaluru - Free left to all major junction."

Very correct and can stop pile up of traffic if it can be implemented atleast on all the 6 or more lane roads.

But before that, you know what another important thing to be considered is, any vehicle standing on the leftmost lane should be enforced to take left turn without any exception. If you see this is what happens at most of the major traffic signals, straight going vehicles (specifically BMTC buses, private buses, cabs) go and stand wherever they find space, if leftmost lane is empty or less queued-up, they just go there and stand, and if the left signal turns Green before the straight, they just stand there, blocking other vehicles behind them wanting to turn Left. Sometimes I see cops standing there, do nothing, just do nothing, even if they are in more than 2-3 cops, they don't care. Ideally they should force every vehicle standing on the leftmost lane to turn left as soon as left signal turns Green. Slowly this makes the people think before they stand there, and it will not involve any kind of challan or bribe. Just the right action.

We had a disucssion here...

Vasanth - 24 January, 2011 - 12:24

Nice drawings.

We had a discussion here, with not so nice drawings though..

 http://praja.in/en/blog/vasanth/2009/10/29/poor-design-flyovers-lead-us-nowhere-solving-traffic-problems

On the North-West corner, there is Silkboard quarters. Full cover leaf interchange may not be possible.  Domlur flyover had the same problem of land limitation on the Southern Side, Diamond District and one more government quarters on the south side. It has been nicely done with all 12 combinations, same design needs to be incorporated here. Ring road should have had the elevated section and Hosur Road at the bottom recollecting the Domlur flyover.

As said by everyone, Bus Stops should not be made far off. This is a major Bus junction and lots of people change buses here.  We think so when we are driving a car and bus stops causes hinderance. It will be difficult for people to walk 1/2 km + 1/2km = 1km to change the bus. I myself change the bus here many times from 500D to 500K, footpaths are so awkward, it is difficult even to walk 100 meteres on this bad odour section.

 

Bus priority system at Silk board?

ashok_n - 25 January, 2011 - 04:34

@Aravindas,

Nice diagrams and very well explained.

However I am a bit skeptical of this plan. This is a variation of the clover leaf pattern (as seen somewhat in Domlur flyover). The issue is at the U-Turns there needs to be a lot of road space (atleast 4 lanes). Otherwise there will be a major bottlenecks at these 180-degree U-Turn. In this case for e.g at Point 4 and Point B.  It does not seem practical to me that this can be done without land acquisition.

This can be observed at the Marathahalli junction. The U-Turn/right turn just after the M'halli underpass (when coming from Bellandur and turning towards Kundanahalli) became a major bottleneck. This was then shifted further up, outside ISRO where the road is wider. Now it is smoother.

@All,

The other day, a volvo bus I was in did an adhoc "bus-priority-system" :-) at this junction. Though illegal as hell, it seems to be a practical solution.

Current: Below the flyover, there are now two roads just for taking  U-Turns only (from Hosur side back to Hosur side; from Madivala side back to Madivala). These are one-way roads and only for the purpose of U-turns before reaching the signal. These U-turn roads are hardly used.

Proposed: Make these one-way roads two-way only for BMTC.

So how will it work?

BMTC buses from BTM side towards Marathahalli: These buses take a left at the junction (free left). Go below the flyover on the 'u-turn" road, turn right again and turn left again to join ORR.

Same for the BMTC buses coming from Marathahalli towards BTM. The advantage is that the Left turn road from Marathahalli towards Hosur is quite wide.

As I have said, I have seen this done by a Volvo bus last Friday. The road width, turning radius etc support this. Of course, it has to be made sure that this is applicable only for BMTC.

Thanks for the suggestions

aravindas - 25 January, 2011 - 14:48

Thanks everyone for the valuable suggestions 

1.  Due to constraint of the space near the intersection and to avoid bottle necks near the intersection, I suggested moving the bus stop a little farther from the junction.  Probably BBMP should plan providing over head sky walks and dedicated bus bays  at these kind of intersections, so that both pedestrian as well as the traffic will be benefited. 
2.  As per the valuable suggestion from the user "silkboard" I have moved the loops 3-4, D-E, 5-6 and F-G away from the junction towards east (Marathalli) as land appears to be available on that side.  To help cross flow of traffic, I also added additional merging lanes on the same side.  
3.  As Suggested by Ashok_n, the "U" Turns seems to be a bit too sharp.  I had only one thing in my mind - removing the long traffic pile-up in this junction, and a solution that can be implemented fairly quickly.   As you suggested, some land acquisition would be required near the "U" turns to make the turns more comfortable.   

Thanks for all your suggestions.  It is really motivating.

Regards,
Aravinda

Another Suggestion

naveen_blr - 27 January, 2011 - 06:27

Can we get some help from BTRAC to divert traffic from ORR (Agara) towards Madivala instead of coming to Silk Board? Commuters can take a left from Madiwala Police station & come back towards Silkboard - This is a solution just to reduce traffic from ORR towards Silkboard.

As of now right turn at Madiwala towards Forum is not allowed.

This would again mean more strain to already congested traffic in Madiwala/St.John's.

But there is a way out from there. There can be a full fledged cloverleaf flyover at St.John's as there is enough space available.

 

 

Avoiding Silkboard

ashok_n - 27 January, 2011 - 08:27

@naveen_blr,

My company shuttles already do this. It does reduce a lot of time. This also avoids the under-construction HSR 24th main flyover which is a major bottleneck nowadays.

On Tuesday, another Volvo 500C bus tried the (illegal) route under the flyover. This time the road was physically blocked by the traffic police and the bus had to go all the way till Bommanahalli to take a U-turn.

Another 30 mins of "enjoying" Silkboard traffic for the passengers (including me).

Two Hebbal loops

Transmogrifier - 10 February, 2011 - 22:32

Given some of the known issues with clover leaf designs (merging traffic etc.), one solution could use two U-turn loops (as seen on the Hebbal flyover) on either end of the Silkboard flyovers. The result is a three level structure (of which two levels already exist). In the figure below:

  • Level -1 (Red line): would be an underpass used by through traffic on ORR
  • Level 0 (Black lines): would be used by all left-turning traffic (e.g. eastbound ORR to northbound Hosur Rd or southbound Hosur Rd to eastbound ORR) and would merge with other ramps (Blue or Orange lines).
  • Level 0 (Orange lines): would be used by right-turning traffic, i.e. eastbound ORR to southbound Hosur Rd and westbound ORR to nouthbound Hosur Rd
  • Level 1-0: (Blue lines): would begin on the Silkboard flyover using the height already gained to loop over the same road after the flyover ends. This would permit the northbound Hosur Rd-eastbound ORR and southbound Hosur Rd-westbound ORR turns.
  • Level 1: is the current Silkboard flyover. While minimal changes are needed here, the leftmost lane of the flyover could be reserved as an ORR exit lane (i.e. blue lines).      

One giant drawback... is that this just compounds the problem that BMTC users already face.

----

PS: Came up with term 'Hebbal loops' since that's there's nothing remotely similar on Wikipedia's page on Interchange design... and we know that the design works (i.e. it's not on the 7 horrors list).

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