[Miyata]

Originally Posted by john.gt

All in all a very good move to declutter the madivala market road.

While such moves are absolutely necessary and totally welcome, it should not be lost on us that for us it's just another commute while for them (and possibly their family) it's a matter of the daily bread and medications.

Hopefully they are being relocated in centralized locations so business remains brisk.

Few years back I was visiting Gandhinagar for about a week. To sample some local cuisine I set out on foot looking for traditional Gujarati places. Walked over 3-kms and all I found was South Indian; Punjabi; and "Fast Food." Finally found a very big field where folks had set up mobile shops selling food (a bit like VV puram street food). I totally loved that idea - leave the streets uncluttered and find space away in central locations to continue business.

[naveenroy]

Wow. I missed namma Bengaluru! Sunday was fun meeting friends. Did the same trip from EC to Koramangala and back today. Damn, an hour and more in traffic. I am already tired.

[Jaguar]

Originally Posted by vsrivatsa

Can someone who took this route today help with update on the situation?
I completely bypassed this area today and took the NICE Road to Electronic City - but interested to know what is the ground level reality.

I drove from Silkboard side to Jayanagar today and didn't see any diversions. The roads are barricaded for metro work but no traffic blockage. In fact, it was much smoother than the ORR Ecospace stretch that I endure on a daily basis.

[audioholic]

There seems to be some civil engineering issue in the Metro Purple line today, which had caused a temporary stop in services between Trinity Circle and MG Road. When I passed under the Trinity circle station, they had closed one side of the road and were working on the beams of the structure of the station. Later I found a tweet saying they found a honeycomb in the concrete structure. Had caused a lot of troubles to commuters using the Metro Today. Hope the services are restored and the defect corrected.

[Mukund]

Hi fellow Bengalurians,
I live in Bellandur since 2012 and used to work at RMZ ecospace until Feb of this year. Till around 2014-2015 things were pretty smooth and then went from Bad to Worse. This stretch causes pain to anyone crossing it regardless of their destination. I can understand if people like me who work there go through the pain to get to office, but why anyone going either direction has to suffer is beyond me. I attribute this to the two flyovers built on either side of Ecospace instead of a single long flyover bypassing this stretch. The traffic police have done their best (witnessed multiple efforts from them to ease traffic on this stretch) and now have just about given up. The utter chaos in front of the two flyovers is something to witness. Now i travel towards ecity in the opposite direction and can see the traffic lined up from Ecospace all the way till Mantri Sarovar bus stop near HSR layout on bad days. I imagine it is the same the other side from Marathahalli to Ecospace as well. And, we haven't even got to the metro construction part yet.
For the life of me, i can't understand any sane thinking behind the construction of two flyovers. I am not a conspiracy theorist by any stretch but the only reasonable thought coming to me is to have a bus stop near Ecospace. Any thoughts on the two flyovers barely 400m apart causing all this chaos on the ORR?

[paragsachania]

Originally Posted by audioholic

There seems to be some civil engineering issue in the Metro Purple line today, which had caused a temporary stop in services between Trinity Circle and MG Road.

Here you go. Seems like there was indeed a glitch this morning.

Originally Posted by volkman10

Namma Metro in Bengaluru suffers disruption in morning services - now resumed.
Link

[Vysakh]

Originally Posted by Mukund

Hi fellow Bengalurians,
I live in Bellandur since 2012 and used to work at RMZ ecospace until Feb of this year. Till around 2014-2015 things were pretty smooth and then went from Bad to Worse. This stretch causes pain to anyone crossing it regardless of their destination. I can understand if people like me who work there go through the pain to get to office, but why anyone going either direction has to suffer is beyond me. I attribute this to the two flyovers built on either side of Ecospace instead of a single long flyover bypassing this stretch. The traffic police have done their best (witnessed multiple efforts from them to ease traffic on this stretch) and now have just about given up. The utter chaos in front of the two flyovers is something to witness. Now i travel towards ecity in the opposite direction and can see the traffic lined up from Ecospace all the way till Mantri Sarovar bus stop near HSR layout on bad days. I imagine it is the same the other side from Marathahalli to Ecospace as well. And, we haven't even got to the metro construction part yet.
For the life of me, i can't understand any sane thinking behind the construction of two flyovers. I am not a conspiracy theorist by any stretch but the only reasonable thought coming to me is to have a bus stop near Ecospace. Any thoughts on the two flyovers barely 400m apart causing all this chaos on the ORR?

It's not the flyovers that's causing the traffic, the sheer number of vehicles that need to enter and exit the techparks adjacent to these.

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by Vysakh

It's not the flyovers that's causing the traffic, the sheer number of vehicles that need to enter and exit the techparks adjacent to these.

Its both. The flyover design has caused snarls for everyone commuting on that stretch, while the tech park cars have choked their own race. Since I belong to the first group, I find the flyover design annoying. For a person coming from Marathahalli towards Silk Board, there should have been a single continuous flyover till Iblur with entrance and exit ramps at Bellandur or at Intel entrance. The tech park traffic could have used this and the service roads below for their purposes. However, they decide to cut down the flyover, provide an exit towards Ecospace and Bellandur and then begin another flyover. This causes the whole mess. The tech parks cannnot handle their own traffic. If so, then why inconvenience everyone? Our city planners lack common sense and order that is present in some other countries. They know nothing about consistently flowing traffic. I have lost count of how many times I have to forcibly change lanes to pass this stretch between Devarabeesanahalli underpass till Bellandur flyover.

Some crooks wanted dedicated entrances to some properties, and hence they dumped flyovers all over the place without a proper plan. A single six lane flyover like the airport expressway would have been such a bliss. It would have given six lanes of traffic above, with six lanes of traffic below plus a service road on either side. Those who had to reach a tech park in this stretch could have used the lower carriage way and service road depending upon the tech park, while the rest could have just passed by on the upper carriageway. Compare that to what we have now Unusable 'Bus' lanes and haphazard ramps whose usage scheme changes every now and then.

[redcruiser]

I guess only Namma metro can solve the problem for the poor souls in this road.
Marathalli to Iblur has become a nightmare. It has become the cause of so much stress. I hope people realise this sooner than later. Most importantly the employees in this area should come out and protest against the government. Just imagine the plight of patients of Sakra hospital going for some kind of checkup.

[ashokrajagopal]

Originally Posted by audioholic

Its both. The flyover design has caused snarls for everyone commuting on that stretch, while the tech park cars have choked their own race. Since I belong to the first group, I find the flyover design annoying. For a person coming from Marathahalli towards Silk Board, there should have been a single continuous flyover till Iblur with entrance and exit ramps at Bellandur or at Intel entrance. The tech park traffic could have used this and the service roads below for their purposes. However, they decide to cut down the flyover, provide an exit towards Ecospace and Bellandur and then begin another flyover. This causes the whole mess. The tech parks cannnot handle their own traffic. If so, then why inconvenience everyone? Our city planners lack common sense and order that is present in some other countries. They know nothing about consistently flowing traffic. I have lost count of how many times I have to forcibly change lanes to pass this stretch between Devarabeesanahalli underpass till Bellandur flyover.

Some crooks wanted dedicated entrances to some properties, and hence they dumped flyovers all over the place without a proper plan. A single six lane flyover like the airport expressway would have been such a bliss. It would have given six lanes of traffic above, with six lanes of traffic below plus a service road on either side. Those who had to reach a tech park in this stretch could have used the lower carriage way and service road depending upon the tech park, while the rest could have just passed by on the upper carriageway. Compare that to what we have now Unusable 'Bus' lanes and haphazard ramps whose usage scheme changes every now and then.

Before the Bellandur Flyover came up, it was a signal. There were long lines of vehicles waiting on either side of ORR in Bellandur main road ( the road perpendicular to ORR under the flyover now). The Flyover was to get rid of this traffic.
Intel was the only big tech hub there when they planned the Intel flyover. Entry and exit was blocking ORR and they planned for a flyover above it.

There was also a concept of Bus Rapid Transit system at that time, was to pass the buses thru the road in between the parallel flyovers.

Needless to say, all of these plans never worked.

Of course the plan to execute the flyovers took about 2 years and when the flyovers were fully operational in 2012-13, Ecospace had already started gaining notoriety.
Hindsight is good wisdom.
And I am in no way justifying the design. I had voted for the twins to be the worst traffic design in this thread itself.

[ashokrajagopal]

Originally Posted by redcruiser

I guess only Namma metro can solve the problem for the poor souls in this road.
Marathalli to Iblur has become a nightmare. It has become the cause of so much stress. I hope people realise this sooner than later. Most importantly the employees in this area should come out and protest against the government. Just imagine the plight of patients of Sakra hospital going for some kind of checkup.

I tell this all the time to my friends working in Intel.
Just imagine the plight of an employee going thru cardiac arrest while at work. You have a super speciality hospital just opposite, but cant reach.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by redcruiser

Most importantly the employees in this area should come out and protest against the government.

I think the residents of the villages around like Yemalur should come out and protest against the tech parks and their employees and their cars and cabs! (I'm one of the employees, btw).

We have made their lives hell.

It's easy to blame the government and for sure they are responsible along with the greedy builders who create these gigantic parks without any proper planning (one single road in and out- I mean come on! It's not that there wasn't enough land or knowledge of how many companies were going to come here!)

It's harder to realize that we are also responsible. It's our vehicles that come in and out everyday. It's our bad traffic sense that contributes to the chaos. It's our refusal to car pool in decent numbers. It's we as managers and our managers that took the decision to move here without thinking of the consequences. It's we who continue working here instead of quitting in such large numbers or otherwise putting pressure on our companies to make them realize something needs to be done to clean up this mess.

[Jaguar]

Originally Posted by am1m

I think the residents of the villages around like Yemalur should come out and protest against the tech parks and their employees and their cars and cabs! (I'm one of the employees, btw).

We have made their lives hell.

I think the now IT folks make up most of the residents of the Bellandur and Yemalur villages. Even in the backword (for the lack of a better term) localities of these areas I see mainly migrants living and very less locals.
Most of the original residents have made millions selling their once barren lands to tech parks and builders.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by Jaguar

I think the now IT folks make up most of the residents of the Bellandur and Yemalur villages.

Bellandur maybe, Yemalur doubtful. I still see a lot of local people struggling with the traffic that passes through this narrow stretch everyday. I don't blame them when they block certain roads occasionally.

But even then, the point I was trying to make is that all of us who work here and use our own vehicles to get to these traffic-choked areas also share in the blame for the conditions.

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by am1m

I think the residents of the villages around like Yemalur should come out and protest against the tech parks and their employees and their cars and cabs! (I'm one of the employees, btw).

We have made their lives hell.

A different perspective to this is, I personally feel that the people who are local to these areas are pretty much blinded with the rental income which makes them forget their own living conditions. Barring the apartments and gated communities, there are so many small housing units which are stacked side by side, offering 1-2BHK housing spaces for migrants. People are trying to build as many houses possible per unit of space and want to get good rental income. Me being on the other side of town cant even imagine something like this, no matter how much money it would get me. The entire belt starting from whitefield till bellandur, and some parts of BTM layout are in this state. Narrow lanes filled with houses. If these residents were considerate enough and not focussing on money, perhaps, the number of houses would be lesser than it is now and that would also mean lesser traffic and related issues like pollution, dust etc.

I think after the initial lease period of these companies expires, they might reconsider staying in these tech parks on the ORR and explore alternate locations. I find it surprising that there is a lot of time consumed in just getting out of these places onto the main road.