Commute

As metro network expands and ridership increases in Bengaluru, crowding at metro stations will be experienced more frequently. This raises concern with regard to safety issues, stressful rides, increased travel time, among other problems. I have been commuting from home to college and back by metro since 2017. Yeshwanthpur metro station, my starting point is always heavily crowded, especially on Mondays and festival days. The metro station gets crowded as many passengers alight at the nearby Yeshwantpur railway junction. The main reason for my running late on most days is the bottleneck caused by the crowds at the ticket/token counters.…

Commuting by public transport in Chennai brings with it concerns around safety. We come across news reports about the unruly behaviour of youth in MRTS trains and MTC buses. Issues ranging from harassment to scuffles break out on public transport and the average commuter finds themselves in the crosshairs. There have been calls to strengthen safety in public transport, especially in buses, bus stops and the MRTS trains and MRTS stations. Sadly, not much headway has been made in this regard even after many years. Safety in MRTS stations and trains in Chennai Over the last few months, we the…

It had been more than a decade since I had travelled by myself in an MTC bus. I was able to do so on my own with my wheelchair when low-floor buses were trialled in Chennai in February. As per a Madras high court direction, low-floor, accessible buses were taken on a trial along various routes in Chennai. The buses that run on Chennai streets at present are not accessible for any persons with disabilities. Almost all the buses are three feet in height, with a four-step approach. This meant that no person with disabilities was able to access the…

Towards the end of 2016, the massive public campaign against the proposed steel flyover, led by Citizens for Bengaluru along with many other groups, not only stopped the Government from building the flyover but also helped build support for improved and better mass public transport in Bengaluru. Protests against elevated corridor project The dormant demand for suburban train gathered steam with the energetic #ChukuBukuBeku rail yatra and all major parties pledged funds and professed keen interest in the project. It also became a topic of discussion during the 2018 Assembly and 2019 Lok Sabha elections. Similarly, the campaign to double…

Traffic, or mobility in general, has been one of the biggest challenges Bengaluru has faced for decades now. While diverse solutions in the form of flyovers, underpasses, signal-free corridors, grade separators, and road-widening have been tried, the issue has defied a sustainable solution. Most experts have pointed out that the only way to solve congestion is to plan to move people, not personal vehicles, and that public transport is the best investment for the city.  Problem statement In the “Bengaluru Constituencies Datajam'', conducted by OpenCity.in on April 1st, we looked at public transport in terms of accessibility to Metro and BMTC…

Tambaram’s transformation into a bustling suburb in the past few decades has been nothing short of remarkable. The creation of Tambaram Municipal Corporation has been a recent development that signals the growth of the area.  With the increase in population comes the need for better infrastructure, services and connectivity. Connectivity has been a hurdle that the suburb has yet to solve, with residents’ demands for more trains and buses a constant.  Recently, the residents saw success with Tambaram station becoming one of the stops for the Tejas Express, the semi-high-speed train running between Chennai and Madurai. This achievement was the…

"How can I be encouraged to walk in Chennai if the roads do not have space for pedestrians?" 23-year-old Varsha Ganesh, a resident of KK Nagar asks. "I take share autos or my two-wheeler these days, even if I have to cover a short distance."  Varsha is not the only person to feel that way. "The situation is no different anywhere else in the city. Pedestrian safety has always been the last priority for the government," says Raghukumar Choodamani, a civic activist from Perambur. Last year, pedestrians suffered 35% of the total road fatalities in Chennai. A study identified Koyambedu,…

"Do you have your eyes on the road or not? Can't you see there are vehicles coming?", yelled a motorcycle rider at a few pedestrians waiting to cross the Rajiv Gandhi IT Expressway on foot. He did so as he sped past the Tidel Park signal, swerving left, on his way to East Coast Road. He missed colliding with the pedestrians by some inches. A recent study on accidents involving pedestrians in Chennai raised some alarming facts about exactly how unsafe the city is for those who navigate it on foot. The study was conducted by Karthikeyan Baskar, a Chennai-based…

After much fanfare Bengaluru's new Whitefield (Kadugodi) and Krishnarajapura (KR Puram) metro line, which finally put Whitefield on the Namma Metro grid, was inaugurated by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on March 25th, and opened to the public on March 26th. Despite being made fun of by netizens for the line missing between Baiyappanahalli and Krishnarajapuram, which is currently bridged by the Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation's (BMTC) feeder buses, the Whitefield metro line logged a ridership of 16,319 on the first day of operations. The line, which is proposed to connect Baiyappanahalli and Whitefield through Krishnarajapuram (KR Puram), is essentially an…

The Karnataka and Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) Budgets, 2023-24, recently announced that 75 junctions of Bengaluru would be improved, at a cost of Rs 150 crore. In keeping with this vision, the BBMP and Bengaluru Traffic Police, in collaboration with World Resources Institute India (WRI India), under the Bloomberg Philanthropies Initiative for Global Road Safety (BIGRS), launched the Suraksha 75 Mission 2023 initiative on March 25th. The Suraksha 75 Mission aims to create people-centric and holistic intersection designs to make them safe, efficient, inclusive, and universally accessible. This initiative aims to make Bengaluru's busy intersections safer for pedestrians, along…