On any normal weekday morning, if you take a peek into Google maps with Traffic on, and zoom into the East of Bengaluru, you can see some dark lines forming around Tin Factory. This gets input from two green lines – the Old Madras Road and the Outer Ring Road from Kalyan Nagar. The ORR from Kalyan Nagar used to be a mess, but these days things seem to be in some sort of control. This dark line extends all the way till the KR Puram Railway station, becoming green again as traffic rushes out from that point, like kids after school, enjoying absolute freedom until the Mahadevapura flyover.
At this point, private vehicles heading towards Marathahalli take the flyover while buses are forced into the Mahadevapura gap, between the flyovers. On most days, if no truck has rammed into the bridge, buses spend a good 5-10 minutes passing this gap.
Traffic wardens struggle to stem the flow of cross traffic, and instead decide to just hold up onwards bus traffic. It doesn’t help that the service road from KR Puram side is now blocked, forcing cars that want to go towards Mahadevapura into the Mahadevapura gap.
After this, the relative calm extends only up to the ambitiously named, perennially under construction, Bagmane World Technology Centre. The flyover right after has been under construction for close to 1.5 years now, and while it looks all set for an opening from the road side, a cursory glance upwards as you are passing by it will reveal that there’s going to be no nirvana any time soon.
Soon after, the road takes a dip and passes under a railway line, what is called by the police as “Selam Bridge”. After that, there are reds and greens all the way till Silk Board, but for now this article concerns itself only until this section of the road.
Now, let’s go back by approximately one year.
19th May 2016
Commuters wake up after a night of massive pre-monsoon showers, to a massive pileup which stretches all the way from the Salem Railway Bridge to KR Puram. This merges with the Tin Factory pileup and creates a 5.5 Km long pileup.
Slow moving traffic at Tin factory, Mahadevapura and Kasthuri nagar on ORR Due to Water loging
— BTP (@blrcitytraffic) May 19, 2016
@blrcitytraffic Traffic Jam in front of EMC2 building at Mahadevapura, Plz avoid. pic.twitter.com/59mxxMBbYC
— PUNITH UJWAL NAYAK (@PUNITHUJWAL) May 19, 2016
Jeez! No letup in the ORR traffic pileup. Has been backing up all the way till KR Puram! What a mess! #mahadevapura #traffic
— vaidya (@aydiav) May 19, 2016
@movefORRward Scene near EMC on ORR. Bus Found safe parking in the middle of constrctn giving up hopes of any move! pic.twitter.com/GVeos170IG
— Sarv (@sarvsaravanan) May 20, 2016
Turns out that this was among the first of the “Salem bridge” pileups for the year.
7th June 2016
Things keep repeating, but June seems somewhat benign. Waterlogging is the issue only once. Vehicle breakdowns, and general randomness take over the rest of the days.
20 mins to travel 1Km from EMC ofz to Rainbow hospital on ORR. Thanks to waterlogging. @BBMPCOMM1 @BBMP_MAYOR FIX IT!!!
— ? (@rkartha) June 7, 2016
For what it’s worth, the BBMP Commissioner did note the complaint down, and even gave a docket number.
@rkartha Your complaint is been registered with the Grievance cell, your Docket # is 10569624 you may track your Complaint by.. cont1
— BBMP Commissioner (@BBMPCOMM1) June 7, 2016
July 2016
You’d expect things to have improved, now that there was a Docket Number. Well, you won’t be surprised. Things flared up again towards the end of the month. Multiple traffic pileups met each other, merged and the mother of all ORR pile-ups was born.
Mother of all ORR pileups today:
1. Panathur Road underpass till EMC & growing
2. VW showroom near KR Puram ORR till Marathahalli.— vaidya (@aydiav) July 26, 2016
It was a week of misery, and culminated in the Madiwala Lake overflowing, and people fishing on the ORR at BTM Layout.
Third consecutive day that parts of ORR were flooded leading to traffic snarls. It took nearly three hours to clear https://t.co/CRi8SuK0NF
— B.PAC (@BPACofficial) July 29, 2016
People fishing in overflowing lake water at 29th Main, BTM. ?
Local police trying to clear the water drains pic.twitter.com/XKCNbgHs25
— Abhishek Goyal (@goyal_abhei) July 29, 2016
Some investigation was made, and the problem diagnosed.
ORR Waterlogging at RUB. After 2 days of drilling drain pipe cleared but found design flaw, pipe lower than culvert? pic.twitter.com/Tt5LDhAlK7
— RK Misra (@rk_misra) July 29, 2016
This was assumed to have fixed the issue. Or maybe not.
August 2016
After July, the rains let up in Bengaluru, and we settled into the dry period that followed, which developed into the current massive drought. But there still was one last salvo the rains had to fire.
#WaterLogging at Doddanekkundi, Selam bridge, on ORR. Congestion towards Marathalli @krpuramtraffic1 @AddlCPTraffic pic.twitter.com/7WPcRIiY4s
— Abhishek Goyal (@goyal_abhei) August 25, 2016
Water logging at Salem bridge ORR slow movement of traffic from mahadevpura towards marathahalli. @goyal_abhei pic.twitter.com/bu27x0riLm
— acptrafficeast (@ACP_TrafficEast) August 25, 2016
The rest of the year was peaceful in terms of flooding with only broken down buses, and buses jumping medians causing traffic.
March 2017
2016 passed, and 2017 came in. The city stood facing a massive water shortage as the rains that had caused much havoc had not been of any use to the faraway Kaveri.
Early March, there were reports of impending rain that could help dispel the slow buildup of heat that summer these days is. People waited with bated breath, hoping that the rains don’t affect the cricket match. And in the misconception that it could help solve the water crisis.
It rained on the evening of the March 7th 2017. There were some rains the previous day in the Western and Northern suburbs, nothing on the East or South. On the 7th night, the rains truly arrived. 8th morning, International Women’s Day dawned. And people woke up to find themselves once again in a traffic pile-up, from the same Salem railway bridge
It started there, brought traffic to a standstill near EMC, backed up to Mahadevapura, and rapidly piled on till KR Puram. The pileup from Tin Factory joined this, and spread backwards. People walking out of Byappanahalli Metro Station saw traffic at a standstill right in front. It looked like the everyday pile-up, except that this one stretched all the way till the Railway Underbridge. 6.7 kms!
On the other side, Banaswadi was breached and Kalyan Nagar seemed within range. “We’ll have breakfast in Kalyan Nagar and lunch in Banaswadi,” some were overheard.
Traffic is blocked from Tin factory to Doddanekundi Railway bridge. THAT sort of day!!!!
— vaidya (@aydiav) March 8, 2017
@blrcitytraffic @DCPTrEastBCP @AddlCPTraffic Dear All be advised. Heavy traffic at ORR, Salem RUB near Doodanakundi due to Water Logging. pic.twitter.com/okwt3OFR2D
— Sham Ghosh (@IamShamG) March 8, 2017
Traffic stealing #WomensDay thunder in #Bangalore #ORR @blrcitytraffic pic.twitter.com/rjzhZtUWx0
— Aiyyo Shraddha (@AiyyoShraddha) March 8, 2017
Pic shared by a friend of mine’s this is near EMC on ORR. Sincerely hope @CMofKarnataka stuck in that traffic to understand the situation pic.twitter.com/yR4o3GIcec
— Surya Prasad (@suryakamal) March 8, 2017
As more buildings come up on the ORR, we are able to get better, larger scale views of the traffic jams and take better quality pictures to Tweet.
A week before all this, the Minister for Bengaluru Development and Town Planning, while announcing the shelving of the Rs. 2000 crore steel flyover had said that some people are not letting him solve traffic problems in the city. Given that it’s now the second year of this issue (that I know of, long timers might beg to differ), and it is not likely to cost anywhere close to Rs 2000 crore, would he be interested in fixing this soon?
The area Corporator, Ms. Shweta Kumar, was apparently not available for comment, but her husband Vijaykumar has promised a solution in 15 days. A solution cannot happen overnight, and whether any work is happening there or not can be seen by commuters passing that bridge. And the proof of the pudding will be in the eating, or in this case the flooding or the lack of it. So then, until it rains next time. Or maybe not!
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