Commute

Yesterday (Sun, 1st Jan 2017) , at about 7.30pm, we drove on to the NICE Road (now it's the NECE Road) at the Mysore Road junction,  and there were long queues of cars waiting to pay the tolls. We found two men standing in front of the toll gates, collecting tolls. Thinking that they had devised a good way to speed up the process, we decided to pay the toll to them. Our toll from Mysore Road to Bannerghatta Road was Rs.58. To our surprise, they asked us to pay Rs.60. When we  challenged them as we knew the exact…

This road is one where construction has no end. Governments after governments keep on adding projects on this road, thus forcing the road to never-ending construction works. For example, now,  the Government of Karnataka has announced an Elevated Light Rail System connecting JP Nagar to Hebbal. There is also a plan to build an elevated light rail line from Magadi Road Toll Gate to Peripheral Ring Road as part of this project. The execution of this project could take some time given that the construction of the signal free corridor is still underway on the stretch between JP Nagar and…

When the Karnataka government announced a flyover on Bellary road recently, citizens protested over the secrecy shrouded around the project. Their main contention was against the Bangalore Development Authority for silently moving the project without much details in public domain. The fact is that the State government had announced the project in its budget 2014-15, and kept pursuing it without transparency. In fact there are many grand infrastructure projects that successive governments have announced in the State budgets over the years, for which little information exists in public domain. Blame it on bureaucratic and political apathy, or on technical glitches…

TenderSURE roads in Bengaluru have been the topic of debate for a few years now. While the designs shown in presentations are only schematic and not open to public scruitiny, the execution of the project on many roads has drawn criticism from public. Jahnavi Pai, an environment enthusiast, has done a study on the environment-friendly quotient of a TenderSURE design. According to her, The space for roots is not enough to help the tree grow, according to the drawings of TenderSURE design available in public domain. This could be a major drawback as far as trees are concerned. The rainwater…

Cycle Days are catching up fast in every locality in Bengaluru. The Open Streets concept that the Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT) has brought in through these Cycle Days has been one of the best things that has happened to the city in recent times. Yes, once upon a time when we were kids, the vehicular population in the city wasn't so dense. We were able to play kunta bille, jootaata and other games on the streets. However, today we are not even able to cross the roads without a traffic signal or police intervention.Vehicles rule the roads, and…

Are you frustrated by traffic delays in Bengaluru? Do you know how much time you and others are wasting due to traffic jams! While everyone in Bengaluru complains about the traffic problems of the city, very few invest their personal time and capability to critically analyze problems and identify solutions.Volunteers from Whitefield Rising with the help of MapsHalli have found a way to analyze traffic problems. The idea is to use technology to analyze realtime Google traffic data to help Bengaluru traffic police, commuters, and city planners to take action.The team chose the Outer Ring Road section from Mahadevapura to…

It was supposed to be a quick route to get to South Bengaluru from the western part of the city, which it was during the 90s, when the portion of Ring Road linking Bannerghatta Road to Mysore Road opened. I was pursuing my post-graduation at a business school in JP Nagar then and would manage to reach Banashankari and JP Nagar that were next to the same road, in just half an hour from Vijayanagar even in the early 2000s. However, things started going downhill around 2003. My rides got longer. I relocated to Hyderabad in 2004 and was relieved…

Editor's note: We at Oorvani Foundation believe that it is important to give voice to all sides of a debate to make informed debates possible. Hence we provide space for multiple views, but the Foundation does not have any view of its own on any of the topics covered. Proposed elevated corridor network. Source: R K Misra As someone who wrote an article here on Citizen Matters supporting the Hebbal-Chalukya flyover, I wish to reply to this article by Prakash Belawadi and Naresh Narasimhan. To begin with, all the arguments I made on why civil society in Bengaluru should in…

Editor's note: We at Oorvani Foundation believe that it is important to give voice to all sides of a debate to make informed debates possible. Hence we provide space for multiple views, but the Foundation does not have any view of its own on any of the topics covered. R K Misra's defence of the elevated corridors project, 'Elevated corridors will facilitate public transport' (Citizen Matters, 19 November 2016) is untenable because it is not supported by data or current expert opinion on sustainable urban mobility from anywhere in the world. Frankly, it seems out of date. The project in…

  A red high heel, a tomato, a snake, a burger. Each of these emojis has a distinct meaning for the 'TrainSpotters,' a group of commuters who use instant messenger application, Telegram, to help each other pin down the location of Bengaluru-Hosur trains. Here's how it works: one among the 1,900 plus members types a symbol—the turtle emoji if they are waiting for the Kurla Express, for example— and sends it to the TrainSpotters group chat on Telegram. Either a bot fetches the information from the government-run rail website and posts it to the group, or another person who is…