Rants on Bangalore's traffic situation

[rjstyles69]

Originally Posted by speedmiester

An update on the one way implementation on Bannerghatta road.

I had emailed the additional commissioner of police on his email regarding this issue in the morning. I received the following reply.

Thank you very much for the mail. On Bannerghatta Road and East-end road, one-way is implemented on experimental basis for few days. It has been done to find solution for huge traffic congestion on Bannerghatta Road between Dairy Circle and Jayadeva flyover. Kindly bear with us for some time.
With regards,
Dr. M. A. Saleem, IPS,
Addl. Commissioner of Police,
Traffic, Bangalore City.

Hopefully let this experiment end soon and let us residents get our peaceful neighbourhood back.

I think this has been reversed as per the newspaper today. It no longer is a one way and cops mentioned that YES this was on an experimental basis.

[Tempelhof]

Originally Posted by speedmiester

I had emailed the additional commissioner of police on his email regarding this issue in the morning.

Can you share his email ID? I have a few things to bring to his notice in Whitefield.

Thanks.

[KarthikK]

Originally Posted by speedmiester

I am not getting enough expletives to curse the dim wit who came with the half baked idea of converting bannerghatta road into one way.

I live on East End A main road and today it took me 10 minutes just to join East End Main Road. It was pathetic, even with 5-6 traffic police manning the reddy hospital junction, it was not enough. Besides that incessant honking and pollution has ruined the neighbourhood. A few residents and I have taken this issue up with the cops at the junction. Hopefully we get back to old system soon.
The once peaceful East End Main road is dead. This road was supplementing the traffic on bannerghatta road. But now this is the only road for people trying to reach dairy circle.

+1 to this. I was not able to reverse the car out of my house, especially with our cross roads being narrow here. Imagine my plight - to reach Jayadeva flyover, I had to go from oakyard (I stay just near the entrance of Oakyard on East End C Main) to tilaknagar road, then towards Sanjay Gandhi and back to ORR from Ragigudda. Weirdest de-tour ever. This was at 9am and it took 45 minutes to reach Jayadeva flyover (300metre distance *lol*). Fortunately they reverted the rule today.

You seem to stay pretty close, in A main road . We should catchup sometime; I'll keep a lookout for a stickered car in this area then.

P.S - did you see the funny fight on saturday afternoon? Angry residents were assaulting shortcut-taking bikers in a recap of Alien vs Predator. This was just outside the HDFC ATM on B main.

[KRRaj]

About assaulting the people who took the shortcut, what right do the residents have to assault the bikers? Is it a Private road/one way? It is a public road. Maybe it is disturbing the peace, but they should take it up with the authorities, not take law into their own hands.

[speedmiester]

Originally Posted by KarthikK

+1 to this. I was not able to reverse the car out of my house, especially with our cross roads being narrow here. Imagine my plight - to reach Jayadeva flyover, I had to go from oakyard (I stay just near the entrance of Oakyard on East End C Main) to tilaknagar road, then towards Sanjay Gandhi and back to ORR from Ragigudda. Weirdest de-tour ever. This was at 9am and it took 45 minutes to reach Jayadeva flyover (300metre distance *lol*). Fortunately they reverted the rule today.

You seem to stay pretty close, in A main road . We should catchup sometime; I'll keep a lookout for a stickered car in this area then.

P.S - did you see the funny fight on saturday afternoon? Angry residents were assaulting shortcut-taking bikers in a recap of Alien vs Predator. This was just outside the HDFC ATM on B main.

Thank god, the normalcy has been restored. The traffic is moving smooth and the East End Main road is free of bumper to bumper traffic now.

Sure, let's catch up sometime. I stay on East End A Main road, my zen has a very small team-bhp sticker on the hatch.
I was unable to witness the madness on Saturday and as I was at work little early in the morning.

[KarthikK]

Originally Posted by KRRaj

About assaulting the people who took the shortcut, what right do the residents have to assault the bikers? Is it a Private road/one way? It is a public road. Maybe it is disturbing the peace, but they should take it up with the authorities, not take law into their own hands.

Well, this was what happened - One way boards were put up and the idiots were still entering crossroads to bypass the clogged junction. Typical herd mentality - one guy breaks the rule, everyone else follows. Soon tempos, cabs, cars, even buses were coming through crossroads honking and jamming up the whole place. The residents were getting irked, blocked the crossroad entries with big stones. Bikers were smarter, they moved the stones away and again started entering the crossroads.

Sometime later, 1 senior citizen who was walking on B main got hit by some bike's handle bar. Later one Skoda Laura which was parked outside a house got rammed by one of the cabs in the melee, rear bumper and boot damaged. Residents decided enough was enough, and that is when Alien vs Predator started.

I agree, perhaps resorting to this was not the best thing to do. But being a resident on these roads, I have to tell you the situation was out of control on saturday. Imagine a hundred vehicles clogging up the crossroad of your house and honking at each other in a bumper-to-bumper jam, right outside your gate. Not exactly something you can go through patiently if you experienced this fiasco. I had to take my dad for a doctor's appointment but couldn't take the car out of the portico because there was a jam right outside my gate!! We finally ended up taking a rickshaw after a 1/2 km walk to the flyover (everywhere else closeby was a one-way). And during the walk, I saw this Alien vs Predator fight scene.

[arindambasu13]

Originally Posted by speedmiester

I am not getting enough expletives to curse the dim wit who came with the half baked idea of converting bannerghatta road into one way.

I completely agree with you. The moron who came up with this idea is either seriously shortcharged in the IQ department, or was drunk when this bollock of an idea was thought of by him. Fortunately, the group of cops standing at the various junctions learnt the hard way that all it resulted in was complete mayhem. Which led them to quickly get back to the normal two way traffic. Thank god for that.

[KiloAlpha]

Seriously glad the Bannerghatta Road one-way experiment is over. Traffic is now flowing - I don't think the cops know a good thing when they see one!

As for the jams on Bannerghatta Road, I find that the worst of it is all concentrated between Dairy Circle and Sagar Hospital junction southbound only. And this is because of:

• Accenture
• The 3 big marriage halls behind Sagar Automobiles
• Commuters taking short cut through SG Palya joining Bannerghatta Road
• Savoury Seashell restaurant
• Autos/bikes driving on the wrong side between Spar and Sagar Automobiles (trying to get into SG Palya)
• Spar, cut in divider in front of Spar and vehicles trying to take U-turn

I really don't think this problem is going away any time soon. There are too many contributing factors to the jams on this road. One way gyratory system is not the solution.

[KarthikK]

Originally Posted by KiloAlpha

Seriously glad the Bannerghatta Road one-way experiment is over. Traffic is now flowing - I don't think the cops know a good thing when they see one!

As for the jams on Bannerghatta Road, I find that the worst of it is all concentrated between Dairy Circle and Sagar Hospital junction southbound only. And this is because of:

• Accenture
• The 3 big marriage halls behind Sagar Automobiles
• Commuters taking short cut through SG Palya joining Bannerghatta Road
• Savoury Seashell restaurant
• Autos/bikes driving on the wrong side between Spar and Sagar Automobiles (trying to get into SG Palya)
• Spar, cut in divider in front of Spar and vehicles trying to take U-turn

I really don't think this problem is going away any time soon. There are too many contributing factors to the jams on this road. One way gyratory system is not the solution.

+1.. Absolutely spot on!
the divider between Spar and Sagar was closed for a while, but from what I heard, Advaith Hyundai used its arm-twisting tactics and got it opened again. Why? To improve footfall because customers would otherwise have to go all the way till Dairy circle and come back. Did the presence of Sagar auto on that U-turn route influence Advaith to do this arm-twisting? My guess is yes. Perhaps they were afraid customers would stop first at Sagar and end up picking a Swift instead of an i20, and so on..

That Savoury restaurant is a nightmare. Valet drivers keep struggling and playing musical chair with the cars in whatever miniscule parking space they have on the footpath there, especially on friday nights. How did the authorities give permission to open a restaurant at this junction, I wonder.

What I seriously don't understand is how did the traffic police arrive at this logic - that making BG road one way from Sagar apollo signal to Jayadeva will resolve the jam from Dairy circle to Savoury?? Defies common sense and takes us back to the Tughlaq era.

As for Accenture's cabs, I strongly suggest that BTP, well.. bans the cabs! No other solution for this problem *lol*

[Bh.P]

Originally Posted by KarthikK

+1.. Absolutely spot on!
the divider between Spar and Sagar was closed for a while, but from what I heard, Advaith Hyundai used its arm-twisting tactics and got it opened again. Why? To improve footfall because customers would otherwise have to go all the way till Dairy circle and come back. Did the presence of Sagar auto on that U-turn route influence Advaith to do this arm-twisting? My guess is yes. Perhaps they were afraid customers would stop first at Sagar and end up picking a Swift instead of an i20, and so on..
....

Really? Someone would decide on the car they buy based on how far they have to go and take a u-turn to visit the showroom. wow.

That road is lined by commercial establishments. Nothing should stop the government from acquiring a few feet of land on either side and widening the road. The Hyderabad government was ruthless in doing so and it improved the situation greatly on most of the roads there (new Hyderabad, not the old areas)

[ramzsys]

The private buses that ply between Hosur/Anekal/Attibelle to KR Market is a nuisance on Hosur road. They always hold up the traffic at each signal while picking up passengers at a leisure pace.

They do blare their air horns at every chance possible: not the simple air horns but the musical ones.

[KarthikK]

Marathahalli to Domlur via IRR is getting worse everyday. They are digging the extreme left of the road to install wider drain pipes, but when they seal it back in, they are cementing the road instead of re-tarring. As a result, half of the road width is some uneven concrete surface which assures your vehicle's shock absorbers of sufficient exercise.

Not to mention, traffic is clogged every night from 6 to 9 or so. I wonder why all activities have to be taken up at the same time - ORR flyovers/underpasses, IRR drain pipe replacements, and now an underpass at St. John's signal.

Originally Posted by Bh.P

Really? Someone would decide on the car they buy based on how far they have to go and take a u-turn to visit the showroom. wow.

I wasn't literally meaning that someone would buy a Maruti just because the showroom is 300 metres closer than the Hyundai showroom. Maybe I should have added a smiley there to convey the lighter sense when I said customers might pick a Swift before seeing an i20 , my bad. But yes, one of my friends who knows some guys at Advaith said that they got the U-turn approved and re-installed there to increase footfall into their showroom. The probability of more footfalls leading to more sales is nothing ridiculous (more importantly when an arch rival brand is very closeby), and is another topic which is best left out of this thread's discussions.

[rohanjf]

Today morning, an IT company shuttle's driver decided to take a U turn at Doddakannelli despite knowing that there was a lorry parked on one lane (that too, facing wrong side). The traffic was held up for more than 5 minutes.

[libranof1987]

Originally Posted by KarthikK

Marathahalli to Domlur via IRR is getting worse everyday. They are digging the extreme left of the road to install wider drain pipes, but when they seal it back in, they are cementing the road instead of re-tarring. As a result, half of the road width is some uneven concrete surface which assures your vehicle's shock absorbers of sufficient exercise.

I dread the days when that work will reach that extremely narrow stretch just before HAL signal (the curved road); it is just about sufficient for 2 cars.

Given how bumpy it is, the part where concreting is done is almost left alone now; vehicles use it only to overtake.

[KarthikK]

Originally Posted by libranof1987

I dread the days when that work will reach that extremely narrow stretch just before HAL signal (the curved road); it is just about sufficient for 2 cars.

Given how bumpy it is, the part where concreting is done is almost left alone now; vehicles use it only to overtake.

True. In fact, this morning outside HAL gate, at one of those drain pipe replacement sites the traffic cops were stopping HAL-Marathahalli traffic and allowing Marathahalli-HAL direction traffic to use both sides of the road. I believe this is to ease the congestion around these constructions. I lost around half an hour on my morning commute due to this today. Hoping this doesn't continue everyday.