[sachinpk]

Originally Posted by naveenroy

It is just an observation from me - no numbers to back it up at all - but has anyone else noticed that traffic has become very bad in the past 4 months or so - max 6 months?

One thing I observed was the sudden increase in huge traffic pile ups in ORR during the last week of the previous month. Suddenly, for a period of few days there were mega blocks in the Sarjapur Rd-Bellandur-Marathahalli area.

Increased income? Compared to other cities?

At least in IT industry, Bangalore pay-scale seems to be on the higher side when compared to other cities (especially Tier II cities). May be the OP, meant it that way.

Originally Posted by alpha1

The real problem lies with the people who decide to move to Bangalore and after experiencing the mess still decide to stick with it.

I tend to agree with you. Bangalore's growth (mainly after the IT boom) has been totally unplanned. Today with better technology, every one can study the situation in Bangalore and then decide to step in or not. Ignorance cannot be an excuse at all. One thing, many people may not find many similar opportunities in their own mother states and cities. The new comer crowd also has not been able to form up any strong pressure group, which has any influence on the political setup in Bangalore city and Karnataka. They still seem to be like "migrant labour" kept at an arm's distance. The city getting de congested is the only way, I feel things can be improved. How it can be done, is another big question.

[mpksuhas]

Originally Posted by Jaguar

Another example is the Haralur road, off Sarjapur road. The road by itself is too narrow two laned road. See the number of new apartments from big name builders coming up there. Imagine the state of the road once all these are occupied.

Completely agree with you on Haralur road. Two years back, the road was empty during weekends. However, now it has long line of vehicles all times. It is to get worse by next year when many of the projects starts getting over.

However, there is another side to this. Approach road width is mandated for high rise buildings, it is not possible to get approval for any high rise buildings in narrow bye-lanes. So builders have an innovative way around, they purchase smaller land parcels in located in narrow lanes, combine it together and then push the local BBMP counselors to move ahead a proposal for road widening.

Once this proposal is approved by BBMP they put it in their upcoming years plan. Based on this the builder gets approval for going ahead with high rise construction.

For Haralur road, there was a widening proposal from 2010 which from the look of is not going to happen anytime soon.

Originally Posted by ankan.m.blr

In the last 6 months, a lot of new residential complexes have come up along Panathur road and Kadubisenahalli-Doddakannelli road. This resulted in sudden growth of traffic density. This traffic congestion warrants a flyover for cars travelling from Panathur to Kadubisenahalli. The road is already narrow; don't know whether a flyover can be built here.

This is just going to get worse since many more apartments are under progress in Panathur - Varathur road section. The biggest among them is a Shoba project, which is planned to have around 6000 apartments!!

Originally Posted by naveenroy

It is just an observation from me - no numbers to back it up at all - but has anyone else noticed that traffic has become very bad in the past 4 months or so - max 6 months?

Yes. Myself have felt the same.

[silversteed]

Originally Posted by im_srini

Started quite late today morning thinking that the traffic volume would've abated by mid-day along this route, however was in for a rude shock...

I'd once got stuck for 30 minutes at 11pm, so there's no real pattern there. Most often, the culprits are 2-wheelers, the 'shared auto' contraptions, and that odd impatient cabbie that want to zoom ahead of everyone else. Especially the autos, that are driven without any lights at night, and carry 6 or 7 people. This morning, though I was prepared for a long jam, it took me just a little over 15 minutes from the Silver County road-Kudlu Road junction till Sarjapur Rd junction. This was at 8-ish this morning. I'd got stuck at the bottleneck alone for 20 minutes at around the same time. After 3 consecutive days of 10-20mins of jam exactly in front of the temple, I decided to try the Hosa Road-Sarjapur Road route on one fine morning. I was greeted with a bad traffic jam at the S-curve right at the entry to Sarjapur Road, followed by very slow moving traffic from Total Mall till Big Bazaar. Ditched that idea, and now I take the Haralur Road itself

[suresh_gs]

Folks

I commute to my office in ITPL by office cab. I switched over from general shift to I shift since january 2015. Earlier for the return trip,I used to reach my home in bommanahalli by 4 25- 4 30 PM after leaving office by 3 45 PM.
Off late I am reaching home between 4 45 - 5 PM. Traffic has exponentially increased with so many people leaving by 4 PM. In fact in the morning at say 6 AM, there is traffic though not that severe.
Everything boils down to the driving skill of the driver to take you to your destination in Bangalore.

[Chetan_Rao]

The off-peak hour trick doesn't really work in IT-company infested areas like ORR & Whitefield because most companies are operational round the clock and there's always a bunch of cabs and personal vehicles on these 'roads'. I've been stuck in traffic at all hours on the ORR/Silkboard/BTM stretch and there's no real pattern to that mess.

Moreover, traffic saturation is reaching a point where off-peak hours will no longer exist, so forget avoiding traffic unless one's willing to live right next to their workplace or commute graveyard hours.

[suresh_gs]

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

Moreover, traffic saturation is reaching a point where off-peak hours will no longer exist, so forget avoiding traffic unless one's willing to live right next to their workplace or commute graveyard hours.

You mentioned commuting in graveyard hours. Unfortunately as the name indicates, the cabbies will be vying against each other so as to reach the destination soon. During this time, rash driving will be of the highest order. Whether we reach our destination (home) or final destination (graveyard say due to accident enroute) depends wholly on the cab driver.
I think it is high time all companies start encouraging work from home.

[dark.knight]

Originally Posted by alpha1

The real problem lies with the people who decide to move to Bangalore and after experiencing the mess still decide to stick with it.

I agree with your point in a way, there is little point in complaining when there is not much one can do to improve the situation. However this is the story of all the big cities in India, Delhi & Mumbai too are undersized for their respective populations. Bangalore has more liveable land-mass spread over 740 sq.km compared to Mumbai's 600 & New Delhi's 650 odd sq.km (combined with Old Delhi it goes to 1500 sq.km).

Where things go wrong in Bangalore is how its being planned, it came to the spotlight very quickly & as a result most of the population live in a little under 100-150 sq.km of areas surrounding most of eastern & southern parts of the city. The northern part has very rudimentary facilities, water & power haven't reached all the developed layouts yet and they remain unsafe & avoided by most of those who want a home. The I.T belt are areas where people work but do not prefer to live because of the obvious lack of facilities like shopping, malls, residential boulevards etc & as a result transport is chaotic & spread over longer distances. Technically the city can unleash more than 300% of the present liveable area but they bring in new challenges of water piping, power & roads to such areas which will take a few decades to be established. There are rampant power cuts this month due to shortfall, its obvious that the city is getting crushed under its own weight & its a sad thing to see for someone who grew up here. I blame the bureaucrats almost entirely for this mess. It might also not hurt, if everyone who lives here whether they came yesterday or a decade back, can pledge to do their part for road safety & to bring about a general sense of unity.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by suresh_gs

You mentioned commuting in graveyard hours. Unfortunately.....

You said it! A couple of experiences I had on the ORR between Marathahalli & Silk Board around midnight made me swear off that route at odd hours unless completely unavoidable. 'Maniacal' is too mild a description for the kind of driving on display.

I think it is high time all companies start encouraging work from home.

That will need both a cultural shift in personnel mgmt. mindsets (India Inc. loves dragging its employees to the workplace, even if it's totally unproductive) and a multi-fold improvement in our essential infrastructure (power supply, telecom connectivity & latency etc.) which are both immature compared to developed countries.

[JD1]

Why-o-Why did they restart merging from Marathahalli service road onto ORR (Southbound)? Couple of weeks back they had closed the merging just after the bridge so buses etc had to go ahead on service road and then merge. Due to this ORR traffic had smoothened a bit. Now it's back to square one.

[sachinpk]

Originally Posted by mpksuhas

Completely agree with you on Haralur road. Two years back, the road was empty during weekends. However, now it has long line of vehicles all times. It is to get worse by next year when many of the projects starts getting over.

You made me a bit nostalgic. In the year 2003-2004 time frame we had made a trip to this area after being informed that there is a good scenic lake out there. All what was there leading to Haralur was a mud road peeling off from Sarjapur Road (at the point where Spring Fields apartments stand today). Nothing was there on this mud road, till we reached a lake bed. The whole area was part of Indian Army's Artillery Firing range and we did meet a few soldiers who were "camping" there. The roads in this area was improved/relaid in 2004-2006 area, and that time frame there were also numerous cases of mugging reported on this "empty" stretch of the road. I feel the roads in this area got relaid, as the elevated highway construction was going on in full swing, and alternate routes had to be identified.

Approach road width is mandated for high rise buildings, it is not possible to get approval for any high rise buildings in narrow bye-lanes.

Who goes and occupy these high rise apartments, paying a minimum of Rs.40 lakh or above? Are they the techies? What quality of life are people expecting by living in such cramped localities? The builder, the land owner and the the local politicians all are laughing their way to the banks, with the money they got . The landed gentry, still hold good swathes of land else where, where they have their comfortable homes and live in the traditional way.

The biggest among them is a Shoba project, which is planned to have around 6000 apartments!!

I can only sympathise with the folks who book these apartments. People are putting up a major share of their incomes earned (in their life time) to purchase an apartment/home. Even after stopping working, they need to stay put up in these very buildings. By then how crampy would be the whole area?

Originally Posted by Chetan_Rao

That will need both a cultural shift in personnel mgmt. mindsets (India Inc. loves dragging its employees to the workplace, even if it's totally unproductive)

True. But I feel many companies are also going in this direction. But these IT companies may also have lots of projects where "work from home" is not an option. Due to restrictions regarding data access etc. Banking customers generally impose lots of restrictions on the way IT companies execute their projects. Due to sensitivity of data etc., they may not allow a work from home facility.

[avishar]

OT: How many of you work in Ecospace? I am in Accenture Bang 7 Pritech Park. It would be nice to know some teambhpians there. Is there a whatsapp group or something?

Sorry for going OT.

[Chetan_Rao]

Originally Posted by sachinpk

........
True. But I feel many companies are also going in this direction. But these IT companies may also have lots of projects where "work from home" is not an option. Due to restrictions regarding data access etc. Banking customers generally impose lots of restrictions on the way IT companies execute their projects. Due to sensitivity of data etc., they may not allow a work from home facility.

True, it's a very complex topic and not just about employer/employee flexibility alone. Lots of factors that make flexi-location work a challenge in India. Probably for this thread though.

[kiran_cr]

Originally Posted by avishar

OT: How many of you work in Ecospace? I am in Accenture Bang 7 Pritech Park. It would be nice to know some teambhpians there. Is there a whatsapp group or something?

Sorry for going OT.

Avishar. Im in ecospace(pritech) building 11. Im sure there are quite a few bhpians in ecospace as i have seen lots of cars with TBHP stickers on it.

[KevinP]

TRAFFIC ALERT

Avoid Haralur road. I can see traffic at a stand still for the last half hour.

[Vid6639]

Originally Posted by KevinP

TRAFFIC ALERT

Avoid Haralur road. I can see traffic at a stand still for the last half hour.

Kevin, check my post from yesterday. Haralur road needs to be avoided for next few weeks/days till they fix the drainage on both sides.