Rants on Bangalore's traffic situation

[poloman]

Originally Posted by KarthikK

I tried this route yesterday and today, I went by car one day and bike on another day. Looks like the route is more suitable for bikes than cars. At stretches it is quite narrow and overtaking tractors/other village vehicles here was quite a task in the car. At one point there is some kind of small concrete wall passage where only 1 car can pass. Even 2 way traffic with cars is a bit troublesome in stretches. With the bike, it is a superb route where we can slip away in and out of potholed stretches.

:.

one page back you were cribbing about traffic being diverted to your cross road and running from piller to post to get it rectified. Residents went on to beat innocent bikers who tried to take the short cut? Now are n't you doing the same thing?

[Rajeevraj]

Originally Posted by superutp

... Now what happens is these bikes and sometimes autos think I am giving space for them to overtake when I am going to one extreme end to avoid a bump. End result they try to squeeze in and I am forced to 'shut the door' on them.

The point is that its very dangerous and I need to keep looking into all the mirrors installed on my car apart from negotiating those bumps as well.

Why is everyone fascinated with squeezing everyone else! It's almost like they aren't even aware they are doing it.

Originally Posted by KarthikK

If there is a gap created, they squeeze in and go ahead. Bikers, indicabs, merus and TTs are the main culprits usually. The worst part is they have no judgement about their vehicle's size v/s the gap, and end up damaging our rides.


Worse still, at a signal, when we keep 3-4 feet of gap with the car in front, these morons will squeeze between the 2 cars, often scraping their footpegs or crash guards against our bumpers. I usually maintain gap with the next car especially on an upward incline, just in case the driver ahead is a newbie who doesn't do the brake release/ de-clutch + accelerate quickly and slides down backwards. Before he/she does this, a few bikers will have squeezed through *lol*. Impatience is everywhere.

Nice coincidence that this discussion came up. Just yesterday I was observing a squeeze situation. Point was the entry point at the under construction Belandur flyover towards silk board. up to this point, the main road is very wide, in addition the service road in front of ecospace is also very wide and recently tarred. So yesterday around 5.15pm I was in a Volvo in front of ecospace and I observed that there were 8 lanes of traffic (excluding a few bike lanes also created) formed on the main and service road and all of them had to merge into the 1.5/2 lanes on the side of the under construction flyover. The squeezing being done was a sight to behold. I wanted to take a picture to post here, but could not.

[KarthikK]

Originally Posted by poloman

one page back you were cribbing about traffic being diverted to your cross road and running from piller to post to get it rectified. Residents went on to beat innocent bikers who tried to take the short cut? Now are n't you doing the same thing?

I see you are comparing two different things here.
- Traffic was not being diverted to my cross road, my cross road was a one-way that day and bikers were moving the stone blocks and still entering it. Defying the traffic rule for your convenience is a different issue altogether. How does that make bikers "innocent"? And I just mentioned the beating incident because some senior citizen got hit while crossing the dense flow, nothing more to it. I wasn't involved in the incident in any manner, just something that I saw while walking by.

By the way, the detour shown by binand is NOT a one-way, doesn't enter residential areas, it is also not a shortcut. It is just a service road which runs along the back circumference of HAL airport and joins near Manipal hospital, and is 3km more than the normal route. Mainly used by service/cargo vehicles of HAL/air force, is the only way to reach DRDO and interior villages in this area and is more like a small highway. I suggest you travel by both these roads (East End C Main v/s Yamalur HAL road) before nitpicking or making such statements.

This was a rant thread, so I don't see anything wrong with ranting that day, especially when a half baked idea is implemented by BTP with multiple one-ways diverting BG road traffic to dense residential areas in Jayanagar. A lot of us couldn't even take our vehicles out that day due to the never ending jams in this area, and I wanted to reach BTP to convey this to them. I believe some posts here by arun_josie helped in giving me that information. If a person living here wanted to go to the hospital urgently, couldn't take out the car and finds he has to walk almost a kilometre to find the nearest rickshaw to visit a doctor, he would have been ranting too.

P.S - no offense meant , and I do not intend to provoke any further argument

[poloman]

I was not nitpicking, just picking on human behaviour to take the short cut to reach the destination faster. There is nothing wrong in that. I am familiar with Yamalur road not East end road. The former is a very narrow village road where in some places as you stated two cars can barely pass each other. Normally villagers are going to get offended the same way you got. But the maximum they will do or can do is make few humps.

Cross roads are made to share the traffic burden on main roads to certain extent. The Graphite junction discussed above is a classic case of bottleneck due to lack of cross roads. A cross road some where from Radha hotel to RxTx hospital should have eased the left moving traffic on Graphite junction.

[KarthikK]

Originally Posted by poloman

I was not nitpicking, just picking on human behaviour to take the short cut to reach the destination faster. There is nothing wrong in that. I am familiar with Yamalur road not East end road. The former is a very narrow village road where in some places as you stated two cars can barely pass each other. Normally villagers are going to get offended the same way you got. But the maximum they will do or can do is make few humps.

Cross roads are made to share the traffic burden on main roads to certain extent. The Graphite junction discussed above is a classic case of bottleneck due to lack of cross roads. A cross road some where from Radha hotel to RxTx hospital should have eased the left moving traffic on Graphite junction.

I agree with your points poloman , it is common tendency to take less crowded roads. When I was ranting, it was in general directed towards BTP's flawed policy there making unnecessary one-way mazes, not towards bikers taking shortuts (it is obvious they will do it anyway). My crossroad is extremely narrow, and we residents here need the entire road width to even take our vehicles out of the houses while reversing. In this situation, imagine thousand vehicles all clogged in front of the house gates inspite of the BTP blocking the road with stones and one way boards. Perhaps I can post a snap here to show how bad it was that day. I believe BTP should have been aware of what it would lead to, when they diverted state highway traffic flow into a residential area.

Yamalur road is heaven compared to the current state of HAL road, hardly any vehicles at all. HAL road is in tatters with drain pipes being replaced at lots of places and reducing road width to half in many spots.

In whitefield, there was a shortcut from TCS / Accenture office which used to lead to the Shell bunk on Varthur road. They could have expanded this road and popularized it. Most of the ITPL/whitefield area commuters could have used this to reach Kundalahalli and avoided the SAP labs - Cosmos mall detour altogether. I think that shortcut is closed altogether now, not sure why.

Even that road which leads to Mark Boulevard / Manhattan associates, could have been expanded to join somewhere near Cosmos mall. Does that lead to a dead-end? I've never been past Mark boulevard.

[binand]

Originally Posted by KarthikK

By the way, the detour shown by binand is NOT a one-way, doesn't enter residential areas, it is also not a shortcut.

Er... being a resident of this area, I disagree There are at least two big colonies (Rohan Jharoka and Shriram Spandana) plus several smaller ones accessed via this road. It certainly is not a one-way, but there is one bridge in between which has precisely one lane.

Originally Posted by KarthikK

Mainly used by service/cargo vehicles of HAL/air force, is the only way to reach DRDO and interior villages in this area and is more like a small highway.

Those, plus the residents, plus all the IT folks coming from Sarjapur Road/ORR wanting to reach EGL quickly. There is a road that connects Bellandur to Yemalur, which avoids the hell that is Marathahalli bridge. This road has a backdoor-entry to EGL via Challaghatta village.

[srishiva]

I drive through Carmelram station road towards Sarjapur Road. Day before yesterday, the gate was closed and everyone was waiting in line.

You always see some Indicabs and Sumos who drive on the right lane and also to the extreme left without waiting in line.
I squeezed one such guy to the left near the gate and asked him why he cant wait at the end of the line like all the others. His reply was "If you have no urgency, you can wait as much as you can in line!"

He seemed totally confident in his belief and felt others following rules were Idiots. All these cabs carry well educated IT folks who seem to enjoy going faster than others I guess.

[lambuhere1]

Originally Posted by srishiva

Well educated IT folks who seem to enjoy going faster than others I guess.

Faster to Heaven

Pun Intended.

[benbsb29]

Originally Posted by srishiva

I drive through Carmelram station road towards Sarjapur Road. Day before yesterday, the gate was closed and everyone was waiting in line.

You always see some Indicabs and Sumos who drive on the right lane and also to the extreme left without waiting in line.
I squeezed one such guy to the left near the gate and asked him why he cant wait at the end of the line like all the others. His reply was "If you have no urgency, you can wait as much as you can in line!"

I see this all the time. At the Decathlon railway gate, you can bet that if the railway gate is closed, every single BMTC bus will pile up on the wrong side of the road. On many occassions i have blocked such people from getting onto my lane and pushing their way through. I am not too bothered about all the hand signals they frantically try to show to get onto my lane.

This is a sequence of events from this morning. ( GJ 15 K 10 ) He had a kid in the car as well.

[superutp]

Originally Posted by KarthikK

yeah, superb point. This whole problem comes due to lack of patience I guess. Everyone wants to be ahead of everyone else, as though its a race. Even a metre gained over another vehicle is assumed to be a victory.


Worse still, at a signal, when we keep 3-4 feet of gap with the car in front, these morons will squeeze between the 2 cars, often scraping their footpegs or crash guards against our bumpers.

Yes I guess its the road you mentioned. I am only aware of names of roads based on google maps.

Talking about careless bikers hitting and damaging our rides. I was parked on richmond road, right next to Baldwin Girls High School properly on the left, made sure I was literally kissing the pavement to make sure I don't block anyone. I was sitting in my car when suddenly I hear a crash from the rear of my car. I see this bike guy, pushing his fiero the wrong way (to avoid the one way, these geniuses get of their bike and push it as if it were normal for a pedestrian to walk casually and push a bike on the road).

I got out, fuming! Luckily there was negligible damage (but damage nonetheless), but gave the guy a piece of my mind. He had scraped my rear bumper with some part of his fiero. (on the bumper recently repainted and repaired). I seem to be getting all my scratches and dents while stationary!!

[akas_chauhan]

Originally Posted by benbsb29

I see this all the time. At the Decathlon railway gate, you can bet that if the railway gate is closed, every single BMTC bus will pile up on the wrong side of the road. On many occassions i have blocked such people from getting onto my lane and pushing their way through. I am not too bothered about all the hand signals they frantically try to show to get onto my lane.

Not worth. Last year while returning from work i was on left and a truck without a helper pushed me and my car hit the barricade in the left. It's only because of frantic honk and shouting of public truck stopped. It's a different story that he paid some amount, but the drama continued from 7 PM till 11PM to force the truck owner to pay the partial amount.

Be careful at least to the heavy vehicle without helper.

[Oxy]

Don't know if this is the right place to post this.

Can anyone let me know how to reach either Whitefield or Marathahalli using public transport if I am at the Carmelram railway station early in the morning, say around 5:30 AM.

I strictly do not want to hire an autorickshaw.

[Rajeevraj]

Originally Posted by Oxy

Don't know if this is the right place to post this.

Can anyone let me know how to reach either Whitefield or Marathahalli using public transport if I am at the Carmelram railway station early in the morning, say around 5:30 AM.

I strictly do not want to hire an autorickshaw.

Walk to Sarjapur Road (maybe 5 min). Take any bus (Sometimes a couple of buses wait there for passengers from the train). Get down at Iblur. Cross over and take any 500 series bus to Marathahalli. There will be Volvos to ITPL also but not sure of frequency at 5.30am.

Note: If the train you are getting down is the Kannur-Yeshwantpur Exp, it normally reaches Carmelaram only between 6-6.30 on most days.

[rohanjf]

I drive through that railway crossing at Decathlon four times every day. First, go from Sarjapur to Bellandur to drop my wife. Then come back all the way to Kodathi to go via Gunjur to Whitefield (I don't take any shorter routes anymore, since they are slower). In the evening, do the opposite to pick up my wife.

I have a fair idea about train timings (from a pamphlet I got), but that's of no use actually. The trains are never on time, and there are goods trains that anyway have no time or schedule. Moreover, they are slow and looooooooooong :-).

Every day, I get stuck in that chaos at least once. Once I got stuck all the four times! Waiting patiently increases my blood pressure and ruins my health. Quarrelling with rule-breakers does the same. I don't think I have the patience to follow the rules anymore.

[benbsb29]

Originally Posted by rohanjf

I drive through that railway crossing at Decathlon four times every day.

Every day, I get stuck in that chaos at least once. Once I got stuck all the four times! Waiting patiently increases my blood pressure and ruins my health. Quarrelling with rule-breakers does the same. I don't think I have the patience to follow the rules anymore.

I understand your agony. I cross that railway gate two times a day and even the one time i get stuck there, i can feel my blood pressure rising. Somehow, all this traffic mayhem is really getting to me these days!