[procrj]

Originally Posted by hemanth.anand

I was cruising on the empty and NICE road.
Droplets of rain running upwards on the front glass,
Trying hard to escape the wiper's lash.
Not many car's and mobikes to honk and irritate,
I reached office on time though I started late.
It was me and my car in the rain,
I fell in love again!

Echo your thoughts. Even though it wasnt empty roads, I did enjoy the ride to work today. Had half a mind to just drive up to horsley hills and enjoy the weather.

[Sangre]

Originally Posted by hemanth.anand

For a change, this is not a rant!
With wipers switched on at its slowest speed,
I was cruising on the empty and NICE road.
Droplets of rain running upwards on the front glass,
Trying hard to escape the wiper's lash.
Not many car's and mobikes to honk and irritate,
I reached office on time though I started late.
It was me and my car in the rain,
I fell in love again!

Thanks for this in the middle of all the rants.

It saddened me to read the morning news that Defence Land on Old Airport Rd. is going to be used up for road widening. Thinking of losing all the wonderful trees on this stretch makes me sad. Some of them are close to 50 years old.

[binand]

Originally Posted by Sangre

Thinking of losing all the wonderful trees on this stretch makes me sad. Some of them are close to 50 years old.

From the article: "Some of these projects were pending for over five decades, D V Sadananda Gowda told reporters." :-)

I think while this one: "Permission for inner ring road from Challaghatta to Koramangala" will help in de-congesting the existing IRR, it will be too close to the already massacred Bellandur lake that it might run into serious trouble with environment groups and courts.

Anyway the Challaghatta route will be really beneficial only if they widen Wind Tunnel Road and connect it properly to ORR (at multiple locations).

[srishiva]

Originally Posted by Sangre

Thanks for this in the middle of all the rants.

It saddened me to read the morning news that Defence Land on Old Airport Rd. is going to be used up for road widening. Thinking of losing all the wonderful trees on this stretch makes me sad. Some of them are close to 50 years old.

Sad that some trees will be lost. But still not many will be lost I hope. They are giving up close to 38 acres and getting 400 acres in bargain !

There isnt any alternative to airport road currently on either side for kilometres. They should have more roads while there is still large tracts of land available next to airport.

[ampere]

Some how I am not convinced about the Challagatta - Koramanagala ring road will help ease congestion. The biggest problem today is ORR traffic. Unless they find a way to get the load off the ORR (if possible), any improvements over and around Indiranagar/Koramangala wont help much. Metro rail over ORR in principle looks like a good option, but I shudder to think, what would happen when they actually start working on it.

[sachinpk]

Originally Posted by ampere

Some how I am not convinced about the Challagatta - Koramanagala ring road will help ease congestion.

Agree with you. What would happen is that the blocks in Inner Ring Road may reduce, but the jams would be there at the entry & exit points where road from Challagatta meets Inner Ring Road (Srinivagilu Jn.? & Wind Tunnel Rd. Jn?). Short term solutions are needed, but any long term plan now has to be based on ways and means to reduce the number of vehicles on the road. Widening old village style roads into bigger roads is not going to fix issues permenantly.

Originally Posted by srishiva

Sad that some trees will be lost. But still not many will be lost I hope. They are giving up close to 38 acres and getting 400 acres in bargain !

To be honest, I don't believe in the state government at all. The Army behaved as an "officer & gentleman" and decided to vacate the land. Remember, this school with active connivance of the state government had encroached on military land. Shows the attitude of the state government when it comes to land grabbing & encroachment. And they are using the school to blackmail and regularise the encroachment. Do you think such a government would readily dole out 400 acres of rural land to the Army? But I think the Def.Min has clearly asked the state government to clearly provide details of the 400 acres of land before giving up claims on the military land.

[sandeepmohan]

Should have posted this earlier for the benefit of FM's. This jam was on 7/7.

How many folks were stuck in a traffic jam on Old Madras Road, going towards Tin Factory, at around 1130AM? As I was returning from a short vacation, I hit the road late to work. Around 1130am, I left Cox Town and was headed to ITPL. Google maps suggested to go via CV Raman Nagar, HAL, etc. I ignored this and decided to stick to OMR and take the highway route via Kadugodi to approach ITPL. Right from Big Bazaar (The store has relocated to Banaswadi) signal till the landing of the ring road bridge at tin factory, it was bumper to bumper. This section, which maybe just under kilometre, took over half an hour to cover. Traffic wasn't moving. On reaching the point of the ring road flyover landing, I get to see what was causing the jam. A couple of traffic police were regulating flow of traffic from each side. They stop traffic from OMR and let Rammamurthy/Ring Road traffic flow and vice versa. I have seen a similar regulation take place for traffic coming in to the city. Traffic police regulate traffic, turn by turn, from each side (at HP Gas station), ITPL and the traffic coming down the KR Puram bridge. This jam was so bad that by the time I cleared it, it must have piled up till Swami Vivekanada Road metro station or beyond. I reached work at 105pm. One and a half hours to cover 14km.

[ampere]

Originally Posted by sachinpk

Short term solutions are needed, but any long term plan now has to be based on ways and means to reduce the number of vehicles on the road. Widening old village style roads into bigger roads is not going to fix issues permanently.

My only point was: The Short Term solution should at least be in sync toward vision of long term solution. It should not be like they build something today, and some time later down the line, they realize they need to undo the same and look at the some thing else (Like the Cauvery theater underpass).

For example, if they think, IRR-2 will help, then at least let them think through with respect to the bigger picture and see where to act.

My opinion today, as I have mentioned earlier:

- To de-congest the ORR traffic; they first need to address source of traffic into ORR.
- Whitfield being a big one, they need to reduce the inflow and have an alternative exit policy for whitefield traffic (apart from KR Puram and Marathahalli).
- For that, my vote goes to development of a faster corridor along the Varthur road and of course effective use of Metro till whitefield to reduce inflow.
- The other thing they need to solve is infrastructure problem for the ORR-Sarjapur road bottle neck. Again they should not look at it as short term.
- Imagine they create something immediate, and few years later, all has to be undone, for a Metro!
- Again no idea what is being planned for KR Puram.

I hope I get to see a free flowing ORR in my lifetime! I guess I am dreaming.

[airbus]

Bengaluru City Police got new Hoysala vehicles - Maruti Suzuki Ertiga.

Emergency-ready: Hoysala gets new set of wheels

I saw couple of those today and those were LDI variant. I am just curious if these vehicles are powerful enough to chase vehicles in case the need arise. Ertiga diesel variants have a rated power of 89 BHP, whereas there are lot of vehicles on Bengaluru roads with rated power of 100 BHP or above

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by airbus

I saw couple of those today and those were LDI variant. I am just curious if these vehicles are powerful enough to chase vehicles in case the need arise. Ertiga diesel variants have a rated power of 89 BHP, whereas there are lot of vehicles on Bengaluru roads with rated power of 100 BHP or above

Chase? Heck they let go of people on puny two wheelers if they can't get hold of the keys in time. Forget 100BHP cars. If they were really so pro active, traffic would have been much more mannered.

Somehow after driving in Bangalore, driving in Europe is very difficult - Because I feel so sleepy seeing the orderly traffic and smooth cruise. Only one observation was that in Spain, two wheeler riders have a little Indian trait in them. They get in between cars and make it to the front of the signal, sometimes slightly into the opposite direction as well.

[Sree73]

Originally Posted by airbus

:
I saw couple of those today and those were LDI variant. I am just curious if these vehicles are powerful enough to chase vehicles in case the need arise. Ertiga diesel variants have a rated power of 89 BHP, whereas there are lot of vehicles on Bengaluru roads with rated power of 100 BHP or above

Chasing on Bengaluru roads? Where are the roads in Bengaluru on which chasing is possible? Every where, every one is crawling at any point of time. So Ertigas are more than enough.

[sachinpk]

Originally Posted by airbus

Bengaluru City Police got new Hoysala vehicles - Maruti Suzuki Ertiga.

One thing I appreciate about the KA government is that they are experts when it comes to propoganda. They also seems to have some good media outlets which would also tom tom their story, and make gullible people fall for it. Nothing is going to change on the ground other than that; we all would see some new Ertiga vehicles with top lights and all that being driven around the city. How ever powerful the vehicles would be; hoping for a US style police chase in Bangalore is pretty much not going to happen. And any chase pretty much would come to a very poor end if the chased vehicle decides to approach Silk Board. The police would get enough time to walk over to the suspect vehicle and pull out the folks inside it.

Emergency-ready: Hoysala gets new set of wheels
Let us analyse this report in more detail...

These 222 Maruti Suzuki Ertiga vehicles will be given six designated spots and they will be completely monitored and controlled by the Hoysala control room, which is attached to the Command Centre, a unit for monitoring complaints received at the control room and through social networking sites

AFAIK, such a system is already in place. Even the old vehicles etc. always had dual reporting structure. They reported to a central command centre as well as the jurisdictional police station.

The mobile squad will have an officer of the rank of Assistant Sub Inspector of Police or Head Constable, a driver and an assistant.

This is the same police force which threatened of a strike a month back. KA and Bangalore city police is extremely short staffed. Whether they can spare so much man power during every shift needs to be seen. Without adequate man power, I don't think the system would work well in a consistent manner.

They will change the locations every four hours. The squads take pictures at the scene and also report the situation to the control room.

Nothing new. They even would be doing this today. None of the patrol teams in Bangalore city works in an isolated mode. They all have wireless sets with which they can be contacted at any time.

Trinity Mobility Pvt Ltd and Third Wave company had designed the system and each vehicle has Mobile Data Terminal device, which will help the Command Centre in identifying the vehicle closest to a particular area.

So a GPS device has been fixed on the vehicle, which helps the control room identify the nearest Hoysala vehicle available. This technology already exists in private sector (redbus.in, has such a feature). I am not sure if the Mobile Data Terminal can be used to receive and transmit messages. If they can do that, then yes it is a good thing to have. In foreign countries the police receive addresses (of the complainant), or details about previous crime history on their MDT. This was done using the wireless sets earlier, but it had its own problems. One thing, copying an address is a manual process and would lead to errors. And if it comes to the suspect, any information shared on the wireless can also be heard by the suspect if he standing too close to the police man.

New 9 report

A bit critical about the whole scheme. Especially on the vehicles chosen for the patrol duties. Mahindra vehicles were the earlier champs when it comes to police vehicles .

[binand]

Massive jam on city-bound carriageway of Old Airport Road. I was going the other way, but saw the jam extending all the way from HAL signal till Yemalur signal. It possibly extends even beyond towards Domlur.

Avoid if possible.

[Rajeevraj]

Got a chance to take some birds eye view pictures of the new massive tech park on Sarjapur Road (Near Carmelaram/Decathlon). It is almost complete and I guess just pending internal fitments and/or waiting for the companies to start occupying.

As per online sources, apparently the tech park is set on a 18 acre plot with 2.1 million Sq feet of office space.

Clearly another Ecospace/ORR mess in the making. Actually it is going to be worse. ORR has the advantage of being a 3+3 lane road with proper service roads. This new tech park opens out on to Sarjapur Road which is technically 2+2, but the huge number of commercial establishments and apartments make it narrower. In addition Sarjapur Road is already notorious for long traffic jams. Things are going to get much worse on Sarjapur Road and that in turn will impact the roads connecting Sarjapur Road to Kadubeesanahalli and the Roads to Varthur via Gunjur.

A potential saving grace is the fact that this is right next to Carmelaram Railway station, seen below on the left side. If more focus is given to commuter rail, employees here will have a few options to get into the city and other areas of Bangalore. Unlike the ORR-Whitefield-EC belt, VMTC Volvo bus connectivity on Sarjapur Road is currently poor.

Completely unrelated: In case you are wondering what the yard with a large number of cars neatly parked is- It is a Tata Motors yard (I think Concorde Motors). Looks half flooded even with the minimal rains we have had. Would be advisable for anyone buying a Tata car to visit the yard and check the vehicle.

[etrast75]

Originally Posted by Rajeevraj

Got a chance to take some birds eye view pictures of the new massive tech park on Sarjapur Road (Near Carmelaram/Decathlon). It is almost complete and I guess just pending internal fitments and/or waiting for the companies to start occupying.

I thought it was completely going to be WIPRO..
Getting in and out of this place is going to be a mess. The entrance is actually below the railway flyover at carmelaram station. If you are coming from kasavanahalli side, you have to go below the flyover on the right side and then take a right below the flyover into the complex ( I am not sure if there is gap in the flyover for that).
If you are coming from the sarjapur/varthur side, there is no direct access as there you cannot cross the railway tracks at ground level. One has to over the flyover cross the carmelaram junction , take a u turn and then go to the right of the flyover. Imagine the chaos with everyone trying to take a u turn. I am sure that some adventurous drivers will try to take a u-turn into the road below the flyover right from the end of the flyover holding up all traffic.
The road below the flyover is very narrow and in a very bad shape.

All this is going to result in some major chaos at that junction. Already the carmelaram station road is getting crowded as there are apartments being built in every nook and corner. The road itself is in a horrible shape.

This situation could easily have been avoided with some proper planning. It is not that the planners did not know of these situations as there is an example in every corner of bangalore. But then who cares. Everyone wants to make their quick buck. City be damned!!