Thursday, August 23, 2007

The chakravyuh at KR puram - the traffic mayhem that I go thru every day.



The Chakravyuh

Note:- this video was not taken during the peak hour jams(8 am to 10:30 am and 5:00pm to 8:30 pm) but taken during non peak hour at 1:00 p.m. when the route was relatively free. Even at this time this one KM stretch took 10 minutes to cross. Two other bottlenecks which follow immediately after this railway underpass pass at the flyover crossing and another under the cable bridge were relatively free at this time (which other wise is choked during peak hours) and also Whitefield road which gets vehicles piled up for 2 kms from the bridge was free at this time. Otherwise it would take more than 1 hour to travel from Narayanpura bus stand in Whitefield road (one KM from KR puram bridge) to Big bazar on old madras road or the reverse way. A distance of 3 kms.

the following steps can make traffic flow freely and make this area into a region of world class infrastructure.
1. By just expanding the Beniganahalli railway underpass to 8 lanes width (Ironically the bridge just a few hundred meters away at NGEF-kasturi nagar road is 8 lanes wide while the road under it is just two lanes, whats the problem with railway engineers? did they reverse the contracts by mistake?)

2. add one more lane after the Eeniganahalli railway bridge between the left turn to flyover connecting ORR and end ramp of the flyover from rammurthy nagar ORR. it is just two lanes now. there is enough space to make way for 3 lanes by taking space from the unmaintained park under the ramp.

3. fix the medians and road islands. the fence from these are protruding making vehicles avoid the lane close to these.

4. reduce the length of the ramp to the cable stayed bridge by a few hundred meteres. you dont need a 700M ramp to this bridge which is just 6-8 M high. Remove the busstop at the beginning of the bridge. provide a pedestrian underpass as the road width becomes 12 lanes here. mark bus bays and make sure bus stops only in these. the bus bay present after the HP petrol bunk is not used now and busses park in the middle of the road which is a crossing area for vehicles from below and above the bridge.

5. remove the lorry repair garages, encroachments and indiscriminate parking of trucks on the left lanes of the stretch.

6. remove the encroachment by KR puram railway platform of 2 lanes of road under the cable stayed bridge on this stretch. this is really the peak of it. a railway station encroaching on a national highway and creating an acute bottle neck.

7. expand the road to atleast 8 lanes on the stretch between the underpass of the cable stayed bridge and whitefield road/ORR junction. This stretch is now just 4 lanes which cannot accomodate traffic from the 4 lane whitefield road and the 6 lane ORR and its 2 service lanes.

8. on the stretch from the cable stayed bridge underpass(KRpuram station enterance) to the HP petrol bunk near Pai layout the road suddenly becomes 2 lanes from 4 lanes due to an encroachment by a shop and the entrance to a mosque. I guess this can be corrected and made into proper 4 lanes even without disturbing the mosque building.
if possible provide a service road to Pai layout and make sure vehicles coming in and out of this layout do not criss/cross the traffic on the main road.

9. last but not least lay pothole free quality(atleast as good as toll national highway) roads and mark lanes clearly. mark main lanes, service lanes, bus lanes, cross over areas and lanes leading to the various flyovers etc. this is really important.

just these nine steps is enough to make this stretch a world class infrastructure with smooth flow of traffic. Of these steps expanding the railway underpass and clearing the 4 other bottlenecks (ala ramp length, railway platform encroachment, 8 lane between KR puram station and whitefieldroad/orr junction, and mosque encroachment) alone can make this stretch traffic jam free.

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