[zombiedriver]

Reading this was like nostalgia. Though i didn't work in ecoworld..was at ecospace for about a year (pritec). Luckily we had rotational shifts and i always looked forward to the night shifts, this inspite of living a stones throw away from pritec. I could literally see my apartment from pritec. I always walked during the day shifts and used to wonder how people spend an hour just waiting to get out of campus. I had a friend who used to walk about 4kms from his apartment just so he never had to deal with traffic ofcourse that came with some exercise benefits. I am thankful that my wife refused to move to bangalore because during my last visit about a year ago i was shocked with the increase in traffic. Happy living a cleaner life now surrounded by coconut trees and a zillion peacocks

[fordday]

I am one of those in the far end building on Ecoworld. Our office moved there some two years ago. Many had apprehensions of moving in there. So our company hired a professional agency back then who tried selling us the dreams of a lavish lifestyle of a tech park of having Burger Kings, Dominos, sauna baths et al.

And so we were dropped onto this reigning king of chaos called Ecoworld.

In Bangalore three of the choke points are well known. BTM (thickly populated residential area), Silkboard junction also known as world's largest parking lot and ORR. Cherry on the top is Ecoworld.

I don't know what sin I committed in my previous life to deserve this. I stay in BTM and commute via silkboard to Ecoworld.

[srini1785]

Reading through your plight made my day (for 2 days) .

Although i am still trying to remember which one of those swanks in ORR is RMZ ecoworld. There are quite a few of them in ORR and frankly i don't bother to check their names. You see that's one of the luxuries that a non IT job offers you.

Being in sales , i travel a lot inside of banaglore sometimes as far as hosur and beyond in a single day, but i totally avoid that IT corridor mess called ORR. I once made a unpardonable mistake of taking ORR for a customer meeting in hoskote ( through silk board -> marthahalli -> varthur -> hope farm ) and ended up spending close to 3 hrs in that mess , all because i believed stella mary ( Google maps voice ) would guide me properly. i now take the lesser of two devils , via halasuru towards baiyappanahalli and KR puram in case i want to get to OMR.

[shiva75]

I can completely empathise with this well written post. I work out of ecospace which is next door and the twin of what is described here. For all the efforts that many of the IT giants are putting to work on their location strategies, they somehow end up adding more people and clients to Bangalore. With the incredibly poor infrastructure and complete apathy by our civic agencies, we have learnt and continue to learn to make peace with this. No amount of silent protests, pleas to governments has made any difference. I once met someone who was in power at the political corridors and broached the topic of this situation at in the area. His response was simple “we don’t care about the vote of you IT folks, not many of you vote anyway”. That sort of summed up why this area has been sidelined for decades and continues to be the case.

[palsaumik]

Heh heh, this is one of the best analysis I have ever read of on the ORR area especially for all the tech-parks being there. Apart from the sarcasm, how do you see positivity in all this? Definitely something to learn from you .

Well, mid may 2018, my office too starting moving (in bits and parts) to Ecoworld and by the time our team's movement happened, I moved out of the company . I was in real plight thinking of the amount of time I would need to take to reach office from JP Nagar. So, in my case, I would have to from from JP Nagar and cut across Bangalore's largest traffic bottlenecks (BTM > Silk Board > Sarjapur Junction > EcoSpace Junction > EcoWorld Junction). I am happily reporting in to my new co. in Electronic City office now and dread moving in to any company which is in ORR periphery.

[Caadmara]

Hilarious Thread, thanks for posting! I am about 1 km down the road from ECO Space at the ORR/Sarjapur junction. Was reading your post over some chai on our 10th floor and just snapped this pic! This is at 11:30am!

[zavegur]

Awesome post! I am one of those culprits who helped few clients set up office space in Ecoworld and Ecospace- have enabled about 6000 people to work out of here.

I start early- will reach before 745am and would leave after 8pm- usually these times are sort of acceptable in terms of traffic. The evening trips notoriously create a risk of getting stuck. I tried various options to commute there- car pool/ bike pool, self drive/ ride, (no bus- where I stay there is no dependable connectivity) none saved me time.

I remember 2 years back I was stuck in one spot from 730am till about 11am- yes it had rained bad the previous day- that was the time when one of the flyovers were under construction. No it did not get any better after all the flyovers are constructed now.

I realised that taking a bike would save you may be 10-15mins- but you end up navigating for your life (zooing everybody and the pollution that sorts you out)- so yea sitting in a car seemed better for your life.

Was so happy to finish those jobs and move outside Bellandur area- but as things have it there is an another office set up coming there very soon! And I'll end up commuting there. i do echo the sentiment from some one above- I now hold meeting only between 11am and 4pm in ecoworld- no other way can you maintain puntuality.

What a mess!

Z

[SR-71]

If I can go a bit off topic, this situation is not limited to Ecoworld. There are similar well known hot pockets in this city. Manyata Embassy Business Park in the north side of the ORR is another good example. Unfortunately some genius decided it was an wise idea to construct another flyover right in front of the tech-park. And for the uninitiated, there are 2 flyovers already on either end with just 700 meters of separation between them and the new flyover is going to be a conduit from within the tech-park to these 2 flyovers. An entire 3 lane stretch is channeled through 2 narrow one lanes where the assorted public transportation stop to pick up passengers, presumably the folks the tech park. To make matters worse, the road in this stretch will put the lunar surface to shame. Traffic is regularly backed up for 1 Km, its the norm.It takes one a good 25 minutes to cross the 1.7 Km stretch on a good day. I don't even want to talk about bad days and peak hour nastiness. God knows what sort of idiots work in this city's planning division !

IMHO, the people in this country get into a road rage even on minor unintended infractions which would have hardly caused any issue; yet they put up with the stupidity of the city departments which make life miserable on an everyday basis.

[ambivalent_98]

This is brilliant. I used to work in Ecoworld 4 years back and I see the situation going from bad to worse. I am seeing ETV evolve as I have to pass it on the way home. Its a disaster in the making. As someone said Bangalore is caught in a downward spiral with no escape in sight.

[sunilch]

Originally Posted by comfortablynumb

I hereby solemnly swear that from today onward, I will never crib about my 22km (1-way) commute taking 2 hours (sometimes more).

Cheers,
Vikram

Haha

I know the situation in Bangalore and Pune (for worst cases) and that makes me accept my 2 hours one way travel to work to cover 34Kms each side every day with a sarcastic smile evrytime I think or read about someome cribbing aboit their daily commute to work.

[lionell]

Originally Posted by Caadmara

Hilarious Thread, thanks for posting! I am about 1 km down the road from ECO Space at the ORR/Sarjapur junction. Was reading your post over some chai on our 10th floor and just snapped this pic! This is at 11:30am!

Maybe you can all envy those home owners bang opposite EcoWorld! If you are a techie and happen to live right besides it, you'll have the last laugh but none of the perks

[Newpunter]

Originally Posted by lionell

Maybe you can all envy those home owners bang opposite EcoWorld! If you are a techie and happen to live right besides it, you'll have the last laugh but none of the perks

The people living near Ecoworld did a protest a few weeks back because they cannot go anywhere else. The Eco world road is their only connection to the outside world and it is always packed with traffic. I understand that there was some ambulance stuck in the Ecoworld traffic and they couldn't reach the hospital on time. Which is sad because Sakra world hospital is just on the other side of ORR to Eco world, but the traffic is so bad that it takes more than 30-40 min to reach ORR.

[Rajeevraj]

Hilarious Read. It is such a terrible, terrible situation. Unfortunately there is no escape and no solution. The whole area is packed up so tightly that there is absolutely nothing can be done in terms of alternative roads, widening or anything else. What is worse is that there is more construction happening and more people will come in. The whole area is a Bermuda Triangle, once you are in, you will be lucky to get out.

Ironically on a weekend, it is totally empty and is the fastest way to reach ORR from further down Sarjapur Road.

[itisravi]

We are all whining about traffic but maybe we need to realize we are the traffic? As I travel through the Eco World road on my cycle to office daily, I see many cars being occupied by just one person. Maybe we should start carpooling more often. Or use a two wheeler. Or use the company bus if there is one. Of course this is not a remedy to the lack of infrastructure but just doing whatever we can to ease the situation.

Just some food for thought - on the other extreme of this spectrum, there are urban planners planning entire cities around pedestrians and bicycles.

http://youtu.be/Boi0XEm9-4E

[srikrishna717]

Brilliant Post indeed.
Everything you stated is a fact and I bet every campus will have same stories as the commute from anywhere to anywhere gives you the magical experience of passing through ..
a) Beautiful stretches of flyover, metro constructions
b)if you escape then the famous white topping stretches
c) if you escape that Cabling work all started at once by BWSSB, Fiber etc

You cross all these beautiful hurdles and often you see beautiful parking lot on the middle of the road and you wonder will you ever login today?