srinidhi - 25 April, 2017 | Bangalore | Roads | Analysis | Infrastructure | Tunnel

Objections to steel flyovers and cutting of trees has apparently led the governament to look taking vehicular traffic underground!

The whole big problem as already stated in Praja before, is that the governament is trying to retrofit 'solutions'  to fix traffic issues rather than trying to first chalk down what the real issues are. Once problems are stated and whetted out, the best fit solutions for it becomes obvious!!

• what and who are we trying to move?
• what is the demographics of the location
• what is the growth plans in the area?
• What are the available resources including money?
• What is the environmental impact ?
• How sustainable the solution needs to be and can be?

World is moving to more sustainable modes of transport options. Cities are also disincentivising or discourage motor transport in a big scale. Cities like Singapore have been doing it since many years now, where the ownership of private motor vehicles is very prohibhitive. Other cities are realizing the truth fast and making appropriate changes, London has taken steps like congestion charging, heavy parking costs, ban of diesel cars(more here) etc . Paris is taking similar if not more drastic steps too.

Car centric USA, which we like to ape, has also realized that building exclusive corridors through the city (extnesively done in the 60's ) does not help at all and have been tearing down such long bridges. The number of trips being made with cars is also on the decline there.

It is high time our city takes the cue and plans well for a sustainable future. As stated by one of cities noted traffic evangelists, Sathya Sankaran, we need to build sustainable infrastructure which can deliver as planned over a definite period of time. Resources come very expensive, especially in India and experiments do not help at all. Unfortunately, the whole city is full of such 'experiments' . Examples like the bridge at Jayadeva, magic bridges on airport road which are now slated to be removed..'hanging bridge' at KR puram, BETL, Hebbal Bridge, Banaswadi flyover, Richmond road flyover and many others  have designs which are sub-optimal and have turned a bane in many instances.

Exclusive corridors, be it flyovers or tunnels, will only shift traffic and not actually solve any problem. Instead of jumping into building tunnels, the govt need to see how their new venture of local public 'approved' elevated corridor in Koramangala does deliver on what it promises and compare it with the numbers from phase 1 metro usage and decide which option is better for the city!

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