Why Bangalore's chaotic roads are set to worsen
Every day more than 3,000 vehicles of all categories are registered in Bangalore during weekdays. They include over 1,500 two-wheelers, cars, light commercial vehicles and trucks. The vehicular population in the city has crossed 5.8 million with two-wheelers accounting for 3.4 million.
These figures are alarming and are already causing panic among the administrators of Bangalore, as road infrastructure continues to crumble under the pressure of the overgrowth of vehicles in the city. Though the stakeholders of the city are coming up with revolutionary plans, it is evident that Bangalore is destined for much more trouble on the roads if immediate measures are not taken.
More than five years ago, the Karnataka Motor Vehicles Inspectors Association, a professional body of technical executives of the transport department, had warned the government of the perils of unregulated registration of vehicles in Bangalore.
As predicted by the association president, HC Sathyan, the peak hour traffic speed in Bangalore is not more than three kilometres per hour in the IT hubs and the central business districts. Going forward, the association has predicted traffic gridlocks on a daily basis in Whitefield, Electronics City, Sarjapura Road, KR Puram Outer Ring Road and Koramangala. One can already see the signs of things to come.
The Karnataka government, which has woken up a little too late to the issue, has announced knee-jerk reactions. It wants to suspend the registration of diesel vehicles, particularly cars, across all ten regional transport offices in Bangalore, for a specified period.
But this will definitely not work in curbing the traffic menace for the simple reason that the purchasing capacity of people in Bangalore is much higher and the salaried class does not mind buying petrol-driven cars.
In addition, in the past, whenever the government curbed registration of new vehicles, Bangalore residents circumvented the law to register the vehicles in other districts, such as Tumakuru and Ramanagara, and ply the cars on the city roads.
The Bangalore traffic police have literally run out of options to manage the unregulated vehicular traffic in the city. The one-way rules and the car-pooling initiatives have not really been lapped up by the people because of their own reasons or the lack of the right mindset.
The civic agencies, such as the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike and the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) have restricted themselves to building new flyovers and forming new residential townships rather than evolving long-term plans to decongest the city.
Though the roads have been widened, the addition of new vehicles every day has only burdened the infrastructure of the city.
Adding to the chaos are factors like no dedicated parking complexes in Bangalore as a consequence of which thousands of vehicles are parked on the roadside, thereby reducing the space for vehicular movement.
The Bus Rapid Transit System with dedicated lanes to facilitate quicker movement of buses has not taken off. The Namma Metro (Metro train) is behind schedule by two years.
None of the residential townships developed on the outskirts of the city have transformed into a full-fledged locality. Sir M Visvesvaraya Layout, Anjanapura, Akrvavathy Layout and Banashankari 8th Stage have become land banks with people trading residential plots for higher gains. These new townships have failed to take the pressure off the heart of Bangalore.
The Congress government seems to have no focus even as they have two years ahead of them. For now, it is evident that Bangalore's chaotic roads are set to witness more accidents and deaths.