why is bbmp rpeating the same mistakes? Having grade separators and making roads signal free is not going to solve anything. A strategy of rewarding mass movement of people has to be followed. Signal free roads & grade separators for buses but not for normal traffic.

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Let us talk with Data.

Like it or not, with the Advent of Magic Boxes on Bellary road, the out cry of connectivity to new airport diminished. The Fact is that it has greatly contributed to the reduction is Travel Time to reach the Airport. Definitely it could have been Engineered and Executed a Lot Better. i would like to generalize the last statement to most Infra projects in Bangalore; be it KR puram hanging bridge, Hebbal Flyover ...

 In my view , it is impossible to have BRT on bangalore Roads (not wide enough for BRT). Implementing Bus Priority is a day dream, given the record of our present conditions. Come to the ORR, you find The Traffic Police barely able to Manage, the maxi cabs, autos, Bus Bays hardly used and public converting Traffic Signals to BMTC stops and the ever growing traffic pile up.

As far as Better busing, although Vayu Vajras sounds great in theory, the number of air passengers using it to reach the airport is very very few. It appears that Bangalore prefers Door to Door pick up and drop.

Regarding Pedestrians Getting Hit, Forget Highway or Single Free Roads, Crossing even our Common 60ft Roads, Walking inside my area Main Roads is also big risk today. Even the Humps don’t deter much . some one was stating this as the "mentality of the current generation". sometimes i feel the traffic chaos has made the people mad.  A total overhaul required in the change driving sense of people.

The total of Pedestrianization, Better Driving common sense should be Separate thread of Discussion.  the idea of Traffic Marshalling  presented by Murali Sir is a good step towards managing this menace.

Going back to the subject, i believe Bangalore requires some grade separators. it seems to be necessary surgery. We need to work on it success how it can be as painless as possible for the people living nearby while it delivers it intended results. Knocking it down based on theoretical suggestions may not be prudent

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Thanks for posting this, I support making corridors signal free. I wish they do corridor improvement and include pedestrian, cycle and dedicated light rail/BRTS lanes along with this. If these facilities are not provisioned for it will become expensive to change later.

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- why is such a huge project not being taken up when an elected council is not in place?

- no public consultations were held

- NUTP, a draft (semi-draft?) of karnataka's transport policy, union  minister for urban dev., all say moves to encourage pvt. transport should be avoided. why then are we going for this?

- where will they get the funding for this?

- what sort of facilities will they give pedestrians? underpasses, overpasses are exclusionary and wont work. besides, its not just the issue at the junction..if you make the junction signal free, all the roads leading to/away from it will have continuous traffic. how will people cross there?

- this requires widening roads , which means homes, shops will be broken, trees will be cut.

i think its a terrible project, one which will permanently scar the city

 

 

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I feel like weeping!  BBMP can only see our city as a network of roads.

IDS - if you can get permanent residency in Sweden, I suggest you take it :) because you will not like what you see here.  BBMP is making a mess of our city.  Only an earthquake can save it now. 

Knowing BBMP's execution capability and capacity this will make our lives miserable for the next 3-4 years and then leave a permanent scar on the city.  Look at Bellary Road - the construction of those underpasses is so poor that they tilt sideways.  Wide roads with no lane markings, no uniform width of the road, etc.  The whole road looks so ugly and bare.  Or please see Seshadri Road and how ugly and uneven they have made it.

Take the Hosur Lashkar Road flyover.  All the traffic will pile up at (the old) Ashok Nagar police station after Vellara junction.  No details of pedestrian crossings, pavements,  Where will the Metro come up if indeed E-City is part of the plan?  Is the road wide enough to accommodate these underpasses? 

Or the Airport Road stretch. What happens when all this traffic goes past Vellara junction.  How are people going to cross Richmond Road?  What happens at Marathahalli Bridge? 

When the keeper of the city becomes its worst enemy then there is no hope.  Ironically this comes a few days after we do Mobilicity.

Srivathsa

 

 

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 Knowing BBMP's execution capability and capacity 

Isnt this the problem really? Not the concept?

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All these intersections are choked beyond belief.  So something to get relief is in order.  However, given our past experience, the chances of a screwed up outcome is extremely high.  The  question we should ask ourselves is - how can we get the BBMP to engage with citizens where we can review their plans and offer constructive suggestions before the DPRs are tendered and digging starts.

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If this solution was proposed only for stretches beyond the ORR (e.g. BIAL to Hebbal), it makes some sort of sense.  But for Langford Road and Vellara Junction? 

"Something to get relief is in order". This is the equivalent of scratching a rash. Temporary relief and lasting damage!

a. We will move the problem from these junctions to the next set of junctions (if you think Richmond Circle is bad today just think ahead).  Are we going to put underpasses and flyovers at every junction?  What happens in 5 years when more vehicles are added?  We thought the Richmond Circle flyover would solve all problems at the Circle when that work started in 1999; in 2009 we wonder how such an idiotic plan was ever conceived.

b. The junctions may very well be choked simply because of sub-optimal usage and bad driver behaviour (not waiting in lanes, etc). 

c. Could better junction design (slip roads, etc) + priority signals (during peak hour) have sorted this out?  Has even one junction been improved along any of these stretches before so much money was allocated for this?

d. Have we utilized the existing road width properly? Most people don't bother to use the left most lane.

e. Where do pedestrians, children and the elderly fit into BBMP's scheme of things?  How will all this help calm traffic rather than speed it up in the centre of the city? 

f. How does this integrate with the Metro DPR?

Srivathsa

 

 

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We discussed in earlier thread the short thinking of our planners in building flyovers and underpasses. So many important junctions are still lacking properly planned flyovers. 12 combination flyovers are very minimum in Bangalore.

As Srivatsa says, our poor driving habit on top of this leads to even more problems. Again, during the construction of infrastructure projects like Metro, flyovers, the quality of roads below that is not maintained which leads to slow moving traffic resulting in volumes build up and ultimate choking. Traffic Police or BTIS has to be tough with BBMP / BDA / BMRCL during underpass or flyover construction for the maintenance of the quality of roads beneath it.

On top of this, long wait in signals of 180 seconds which in turn will pile up traffic volumes. Earlier manually operated police booths were far better than the current traffic lights.

Can this be done:

For imposing lane discipline, can cones or police barricades be placed on lanes on some important roads and monitored for few days.

Trial run of Bus Lanes on Important Roads

Reduce traffic light waits from current 180 seconds to 60 seconds with 15 second cycle.

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@Srivathsa

Agree with points a, b, c, d, e and f.  You are preaching to the choir IMHO.  You heard Sri Chikkarayappa the other day. CM has allocated 22,000 crores (from where is another question).  The promise of money is there and there are no controls.  So this will move forward unless there is a HUGE protest (not going to happen) or a miracle happens and like those old Russian fairy tales, the wise witch fixes everything while we sleep.

All I know is the following

(1) Things need to be improved

(2) An effort is on to improve things, even if the focus and quality of that effort looks terrible.

(3) Money seems to be available for improvements

(4) We have to find a way to move this effort to something that is more sensible.

(5) Does talking here or at mobilicity or anywhere else help when 22000 crores is up for grabs and the system is incentivized to funnel that money to various pockets.

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Good to see the responses to the junctions list on Citizen Matters.

Please do share your thoughts here as well. If you do get any information on these junctions in the form of DPRs and so on, please do share it with us. You can contact me at vaishnavi@citizenmatters.in

Regards

Vaishnavi Vittal

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 Has even one junction been improved along any of these stretches before so much money was allocated for this?

This I need to agree.... Suhas and team presented a nice report here on improvement of the hosur road stretch with protected turns, pedestrian paths, cycle lanes etc. This hasnt seen the light of day.

But we do need north-south, east-west corridors to avoid people going all across surface streets and clogging every street. Will ANY corridor include mass transport? will it include ped paths, cycle tracks etc (these are corridors inside the city not expressways). I am worried we arent including these key features in any plans.

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 matters..cos this will decide if we will have a shabby magic jobs or a clean fast solution like the mysore road flyover..though even there govt blotched the project by dropping the down ramp on SP road ubruptly!

Dunno why CMH road has been made a mess for so long by BMRCL or the Bombay store decided to move out of MG road..but the metro work by NCC and L&T on north road is amazing..

They have really planned it out well..the road there is very usable and neatly asphalted..and the traffic junctions have private traffic mgmt folks working round the clock to control traffic..very impressive!

and apart from these..their engineering skills are unmatched..mysore road flyover is still one of the best in constuction..and all that was done in record time!

Get the right people doing it and monitor it well..we spend a lil more..doesnt matter..if the job gets done well!

Did I hear TBM's for underpasses??

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For those supporting this move & imagining that it will improve & streamline traffic in the city, I have a set of questions :

1) Which other world city has all it's main streets leading up to city centers planned without traffic signals, similar to freeways or highways ?

2) Which other world city has policies that are consistently encouraging private modes of travel by adding more & more capacities, especially even after there has been ample evidence & substantial proof that such measures have only resulted in more chaos & more demands for such facilities in a never-ending cycle ?

3) Which other world city has consistently been under-charging for road use, whilst simultaneously infusing enormous capital to improve them ?

4) Which other world city's planners have been held to ransom with these as logic for building up the case for more flyovers: (a) Implementing even the simpler bus priorities are impossible; (b) Enforcement records have been poor; (c) Traffic cops have been unable to manage traffic due to pileups & large volumes of traffic; (d) City's residents prefer door to door pickups and drops ?


I repeat what I stated in an earlier paper, that the actual policies, as opposed to NUTP-2006 in principle appear socially regressive, financially unsustainable & environmentally unfriendly - The city is slowly & systematically being ruined, I might add.

 
If cities even in Africa such as Dar-es-Salaam are building BRTs, one wonders why we cannot start a process here. Agreed that the path is going to be difficult & resolving the many obstacles is going to be hard, but it certainly would be far better than encouraging, in fact inviting more traffic on the roads.

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 Although BTIS claim they have synchronized singals all over, except for the KR Circle to Townhall, we do not get any synchronized signals especially on the ORR. Also long signal waits of 120-180 seconds are the major cause of delays in commute. Imagine if one has to wait for 120-180 seconds in each and every signal for a 25-30 km commute say from Nagarbhavi to ITPL.

Earlier manual police operated signals were better than the new BTIS signals which they claim as intelligent signals.

Coming to BRT, although Bangalore roads are not wider, we have lots of oneway roads which can be utilized for BRT. Clear example is the Airport Road, Residency Road, KG Road.

ORR between Silkboard and Hebbal which has got 3 lanes can be a good candidate. Also there are two parallel roads between Jayadeva and Kadrenahalli Cross which can be made one way in opposite directions to get the width and BRT can be done here with two lanes.

 

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Vasanth,

The longer the wait becomes at traffic signals, the more pressing the need for high efficiency public transport (such as BRT, Mono or Metro).

The solution lies in trying to contain traffic growth with sensible alternatives rather than giving way & trying to remove traffic signals.

Trying to address traffic problems with only flyovers & signal-free roads with little attention to PTs is a recipe for disaster since these roads will again become insufficient within a few years. The 1st tier of elevated roads will then have to be built, soon to be followed by a 2nd tier - similar to the LA syndrome.

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