[sachinpk]

Originally Posted by Rajeevraj

But this is probably 10-15 years down the line.

Considering the plan v/s actual I have seen, I guess it would take much more time. I don't know even if the land acquisition is complete for the later phases.

As long as the infrastructure and facilities within the campuses meet international standards, I don't think most of the companies care about the struggles the employees need to face to reach office.

Again, I cannot predict what would happen. If you notice it is the generally Indian IT big-wigs who insists that truck loads of their employees land up at their campus and work. Many others are slowly allowing work from home options. There could be companies whose expertise is in a focused area, the number of employees are relatively low and hence really need not have really huge campuses. Such companies (may be because of their specialised nature of work), may start worrying if lots of their employees start thinking of quitting mainly due to the Bengaluru city life pressure. I do agree that for companies like Infy, Wipro etc., they would just not care. Most of their work force are teenagers, who perhaps may have more tolerance levels for such kind of thing. The first generation of IT employees are now hitting their 40s, let us see how much of tolerance level they have .

[Soumyajit9]

Kinda a feel good post from my end. My baby Beat is in the A.S.S for 3 days for a door panel work. Which means either I take the bike to work or take a bus. Bus ruled out since my work starts at 6:30 AM. So I decided to ride my 10 year old Yamaha Libero, which has been my errands ride. Tanked up 200 bucks of fuel and topped up tyre air pressure last night.

Left for work at 5:55 AM from my house for a 24 kms ride to work at Whitefield. Rode at the maximum possible speed of 55kmph (yeah, that is the max speed for my bike ) at 6k RPM. Kept to leftmost lane and smoothly jumped up on speedbreakers, navigated easily through broken tarmac, potholes. Reached office in a cool 30 mins, compared to 40-45 mins in car at this time !!

Good effects of riding:
- Less time, because I could jump up the speed breakers at good speed, compared to stop-go speed in a car !
- Less time, this time because I could negotiate potholes and broke tarmac at good speed, owing to just 2 wheels to manage.
- Cool breeze and pleasant weather.

Ill effects of riding:
- Had to keep praying for the 30 mins, that no one bumps me off from behind !!
- Nallurahalli stretch is only "In God Hands". Was slammed by atleast 2-3kg of dust and sand and what not. I overtook a 4 wheeler to get rid of the dust, then there comes another from the opposite direction and I ride into his left over dust storm !!
- The cool breeze is okay at 6 am. I will surely be roasted at 4pm heat !!
- Need to pray more while returning at 4 PM due to more traffic and more risks.

Overall verdict: Unless there is an absolute reason, I am not riding 25 kms !! A BMTC would be preferred if the timing is a little late (and not shift timings). And nothing like the comfor of my baby Beat.

[ampere]

Originally Posted by Soumyajit9

And nothing like the comfor of my baby Beat.

For a moment I thought you said baby seat and not baby Beat!

Of course the morning time works very well. If you can make that timing work its fantastic. Nowadays I notice traffic even at 7AM in the morning.

[Soumyajit9]

Originally Posted by ampere

For a moment I thought you said baby seat and not baby Beat!

Of course the morning time works very well. If you can make that timing work its fantastic. Nowadays I notice traffic even at 7AM in the morning.

Yeah, been working in shifts for about a year now, after a break of some 4 years. Feels good, apart from the painful waking up in the morning.

There are sweet timings I have observed, a 5-10 mins here and there, and its chaos all around. I have calculated almost the approx times I have to be at certain checkpoints. For example I keep a target to be at Kundalahalli junction between 6:20 - 6:30. A few minutes here and there, and I would be sitting within a jam.

[kavu75]

Heavy traffic after Madivala police station to electronic city side. Got stuck at silk board flyover from last 30 minutes.
Edit - Traffic at Bomanahalli signal is the culprit.

[ashwin.terminat]

Traffic piled up throughout Marathahalli Bridge owing to a BMTC Volvo breakdown right in the middle of the road just at Kundalahalli Gate.

And the scorching is just maddening! :(

As sachinpk mentioned, one of the main reasons I am considering quitting my current company is the work location. Whitefield is just no fun to travel to and fro every day. A 9 hour job ends up taking up 12 hours of the day due to travel times. Moving to a nearby location is not possible because my parents live in the heart of the city and with my pay, it does not make financial sense as well. :(

[suresh_gs]

Originally Posted by ashwin.terminat

Traffic piled up throughout Marathahalli Bridge owing to a BMTC Volvo breakdown right in the middle of the road just at Kundalahalli Gate.

And the scorching is just maddening! :(

As sachinpk mentioned, one of the main reasons I am considering quitting my current company is the work location. Whitefield is just no fun to travel to and fro every day. A 9 hour job ends up taking up 12 hours of the day due to travel times. Moving to a nearby location is not possible because my parents live in the heart of the city and with my pay, it does not make financial sense as well. :(

Is it possible for you to come in I shift. I did the same. Earlier i used to come in general shift from Bommanahalli to ITPL. ITPL runs the BMTC chartered buses from various locations across the city. In my case the bus starts at around 7:45 AM and it is around 9-9:15 AM when the bus reaches ITPL
The return journey is the worst. I have a bus at 5:45 PM which reaches my destination at around 7 PM (worst case 7:30 PM). if i miss this bus then i have to catch the 6:10 bus. This bus usually reaches my destination by 8-8:30 PM. Finally what is that i achieved out of this commute??

NOTHING

I then switched over to I shift. The van comes to my flat by 6 AM and i reach office by 6:30 AM. In the return trip, the van leaves office by 3:40 PM (shift gets over by 3:30 PM) and i reach home by 4:30 PM.

Benefits include saving atleast 2 hrs daily on travel, spending more time at home. Since i have to communicate with my counterparts in North America, I find it very convenient to do so from home.

Why don't you think about this option??

[ashwin.terminat]

Originally Posted by suresh_gs

I then switched over to I shift. The van comes to my flat by 6 AM and i reach office by 6:30 AM. In the return trip, the van leaves office by 3:40 PM (shift gets over by 3:30 PM) and i reach home by 4:30 PM.

Unfortunately, our earliest shift starts from 8:00AM. And our teams decide the shift timings depending on the country they interact with. Since mine works with a UK time, my shift is from 10:30AM - 7:30AM.

[sachinpk]

Originally Posted by Soumyajit9

Bus ruled out since my work starts at 6:30 AM. So I decided to ride my 10 year old Yamaha Libero, which has been my errands ride.

For the last one year, my job role has changed which gave me good flexibility on managing the day to day affairs. No one micro managed me, and I did not have to micro manage any one else. It was only for the past two weeks that I tried commuting by BMTC. Summarising my thoughts:-

My condition:
1. I stay in the very outskirts of the city
2. My office location is around 9kms away from where I stay, and I always commute against the usual flow of traffic.
3. Nature of job gives me flexibility on working hours, I can also work from home if required.

Advantages (of BMTC):
1. Cost. My per day commute costs is Rs.45/-, where as a litre of diesel costs Rs.58 odd. I may go for monthly pass from next month.
2. Ease of travel. In the bus, if I manage to find a seat then the journey is very comfortable. The driver does the tough job of driving, and I can just keep looking out of the window like a school kid, thinking about life in general. Now, I have identified certain bus stops where lots of people get down, so I do get a seat pretty much quickly.
3. Mental comfort. As an individual I do favour journeys by public transport. I have used it where ever possible. I get to see more people as well. And at around 1900hrs, I get down at the bus stop closer to home, just do a quick praying at the temple near by, wave hands to the friendly stationary shop owner (or buy groceries for home), and take a leisurely walk back home.

Disadvantages:
1. Keeping lose change. But if I get the monthly pass, this problem is done for good.
2. Crowded buses. For a person who commutes by a car all alone, and that too for nearly 5 years the crowd in the bus may be a bit discomforting. Your laptop bag will feel more heavier, you may not find a seat to sit as soon as you board the bus. You find yourself "boxed in" to the bus timings.
3. You may not get direct buses from source to destination. So there is a small hassle of waiting for the bus at the bus stop, or just walk a bit to the next bus stop.
4. The early morning trip is a bit challenging, as wifey also has to finish the breakfast cooking etc. early as I just cannot start my journey when ever I want. http://www.mybmtc.com has a good route planner. I have made an excel sheet of all the routes important for me (and stuck it on the wall), with approximate time the bus arrives at my bus stop. Keep a variation of +/- 5 mins, and it is pretty much predictable.

[paragsachania]

BETL was jammed right from the Silkboard side entry due to some accident ahead that it was utter chaos this afternoon with all the vehicles making U-Turns on the ramp and heading the opposite direction.

Another topic that I wanted to highlight was the horrible condition of most of the medians all over the city.

I have often witnessed accidents on this stretch (Adugodi leading towards Forum Mall) with vehicles climbing the median.

Just look at these and you know disaster is waiting to happen when its dark, raining and that fella on the opposite lane if driving with high beams.

[suresh_gs]

Originally Posted by paragsachania

BETL was jammed right from the Silkboard side entry due to some accident ahead that it was utter chaos this afternoon with all the vehicles making U-Turns on the ramp and heading the opposite direction.

I passed the bommanahalli signal by 4:20 PM. The entire stretch from silk board to bommanahalli signal was free. Even not much traffic on the BETL ramp.

[paragsachania]

Originally Posted by suresh_gs

I passed the bommanahalli signal by 4:20 PM. The entire stretch from silk board to bommanahalli signal was free. Even not much traffic on the BETL ramp.

Should be as the pics I have posted were around 3PM when most of the crowd already knew that BETL was jammed ahead due to some accident.

My colleague who passed this an hour before me said there was a TT that people were pushing and it was almost parked sideways while traffic was passing through the gap next to it.

Could be a case that the affected vehicle may have been moved out of BETL over the next few hours.

The post was not really an alert anyway as this is an unusual time we expect most of the BHPians to head that way .

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by paragsachania

.......the horrible condition of most of the medians all over the city...........

For the concrete block types, blame bikers and auto guys. I've personally witnessed some of these morons remove a block or two to move ahead, hop lanes or just turn around in case of a traffic snarl. The worst example I've seen is probably the Richmond Road flyover (Shantinagar TTMC up-ramp side), there are more blocks sideways than in-line and the one-lane-each-way passage is a disaster waiting to happen. Not inconceivable that some unfortunate biker or car might hit a block at high speed at night and catapult into/over the low parapet.

[paragsachania]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

For the concrete block types, blame bikers and auto guys.

Have been watching them since years. In fact, on ORR at certain locations we have heap of mud over which construction trucks pass over!

The authorities must install huge medians and plug this menace that can cause some serious accidents.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by paragsachania

Have been watching them since years. In fact, on ORR at certain locations we have heap of mud over which construction trucks pass over!

The authorities must install huge medians and plug this menace that can cause some serious accidents.

I never understood why they can't nail those blocks into the tarmac at ALL spots, as clearly done in lots of places. Don't think girders/rods cost that much, do they? Leaving loose blocks around is not only open to mischief, but easily prone to disastrous consequences given how much road sense the average Indian driver/rider has.