"Bangl"road to hell !!

Wow look at the posting date. Its been a real long time. In the meanwhile I've learnt to adjust madi to the traffic in my good ol' Santro. Of course I've been fortunate to get help from a really unexpected quarter - radio. Can you believe it - we now have 7 FM radio stations in Bangalore !! I've actually started using the FMI, FMII and FMIII buttons - er ... not the III yet but we'll soon hit that I think at the rate they're opening up. Just a year back there was just Radio City and I used to fret around for more choice.

Anyway back to the roads (need to stick to mission statement) - and good ol' M'alli bridge is at the center of my attention as usual. Hear, hear they're now six laning this bridge as I speak. The powers-that-be are at it for the last 7 months now. The deadline will slip by as usual but they're chugging away for sure. I'm not sure if it'll still take the load though. There's a gazillion apartments coming up all around. I still feel like relocating .... !!

Bangalore Roads

Picture this :

- there's a zillion apartments coming up around the Ring Road-Marathahalli Junction. Looking like pigeon holes if I might add. Price - upwards of 50 l per flat ... !! I counted an average of atleast 7 floors on each one. Now just imagine the no. of people + the no. of cars. So its going to get MORE JAMMED !!
- there's another set of zillion apartments on the AECS layout and its therabouts. Another set of people + cars.
- A mega-polis (with a namesake related to the one and only Nobel Laureate from yore) is coming up near ITPL. The matrix - 15 towers with 25 floors + Radisson + Multiplex + Shopping mall.

I think I'll relocate so I don't have to go there anymore.

Wow its been a good 6 months since I posted. Time just flew by I guess !! I think there's been some good progress the last 6 months. A few highlights :

- roads all the way till Whitefield (with a few patches in between) are now tarred up real thick - thankfully all the rains have'nt made any holes (surprise, surprise) in too many places
- Marathahalli Junction has gotten much better to navigate - dividers, signals with timers - the works. However the cops there need to educate the pedestrians. A good many of them just dart across even if the pedestrian light is red !! I read about "Pelican lights" being installed in other junctions. No good unless you educate the masses.
- SAP labs turnout junction nowadays has a cop manning it all the time. If not the cop there's some hassled private security chap who just about manages to keep the gas-pedal-happy Qualises and Sumo drivers in check.

Life's good ... now only if Basavanagar main road (where I live) gets better (with tar and all) ... Wishful thinking !!

Bangalore Roads

I must say the powers-that-be finally woke up to the chaos happening there. They've erected big medians into the road leading upto the god forsaken bridge (I'm saying this in the context of traffic reasons only). This has brought quite a bit of order in the chaos that used to exist just a week back. Poor cops must be heaving a sigh of relief.

I can see more stuff coming in ... possibly some signals to relieve the already hassled cops ?? Fingers crossed !!

And that is - the SAP Labs turnout on way to the "EPIP" (Export Promotion Industrial Park) - short for special economic zones created for the Fortune 500 companies that have setup shop in this very 'ispecial' place.

The last 2 days I've been stuck in jams lasting a kilometer and needless to say 45 min. minimum at the wheel without moving an inch. Reason - no clue whatsoever !!

I think I'll take a new route which promises to be much more hassle free although a little longer on the mileage part. Cops of Bangalore please take note.

We now move onto the perils of driving in Bangalore. Here're a few :

- Big dirty looking buses and trucks trying to inch forward and occupying the entire road. Try overtaking them but they're so busy trying to go uphill they don't care. Or if you try overtaking from the left you'll see several sleepy cyclists or pedestrians ambling along on the left. Risk it at your well, own risk !!
- Mini-buses - what're these anyway ? "Relics-of-the-raj" is more like it. They're so beaten down that they refuse to move out of the way. There's either no horsepower or the bus's so full or maybe the steering is stuck coz of the weight !! I'll post a snap someday ....
- Over zealous Qualis'es/Sumos. These are usually white in color and will do anything to get ahead of you. Reason - they are "contracted" by the BPOs (all dutifully driving the Indian economy) and need to reach the sleepy-heads inside on time failing which the BPO will cancel his contract.
Their favorite approach is as detailed below :
- identify target to overtake
- put on indicator - mind you this should be done from your blind spot
- you'll see the indicator only when the Qualis or Sumo is just a hair's breadth away (either on the left or on the right)
- At which time you can honk all you can but the driver does'nt care - he has enough first mover advantage to get ahead leaving you honking your poor horn ...

Wonder where they teach 'em these tricks....

More later .... there's a lot ahead folks. Stay tuned.

I need to get this out of my system. So the show continues ...

The next set of problems is with the utter lack of lane discipline. Watch the Marathahalli bridge at peak hours (8:30 AM - 11 AM OR 7 PM - 8:30 PM). The bridge is so narrow that when vehicles have to get onto it they do so from the left. Capisce ??

Ok ... for those who did'nt ... picture a stream of water flowing at a pretty regular pace coming down a hill. Now imagine it has to navigate into a man made pipe which is 2 ft diameter as opposed to the stream that was say 6 ft wide ....

The best part of the whole thing is there are NO cops that are controlling these commercial vehicles (yes, all the buses/trucks/Qualis/Sumos are CVs). And all of them get onto the "left most" of the bridge to get ahead. The most ironical thing is even if they do, you'll find them not very much ahead once you cross the bridge. Why all the hurry to get ahead then ??

Onto the next big thing - the cops (or lack of them) ... There's one lame-duck cop on the top of the bridge where there's a junction. That reminds me, this junction was almost a much-overlooked one till a lot of flats suddenly mushroomed around the bottom of the bridge, on either side of the railway tracks (That's right I forgot to mention - the Marathahalli bridge goes over a railway track). A good 3 years ago, it used to take me 2 min. to cross the Marathalli Ring Road junction and the bridge all at one go. Today it takes me 25 min. from Marathahalli Market (usually from the gate of the Air Force Officer's colony) till I'm over the bridge on the other side.

And all this is due to the one cop that I talked about - so let's get back to him ... All he does is stop traffic for an odd scooterist or an auto or a slow-moving truck that wants to join mainstream traffic. In the 2 seconds that he stops traffic for, there gets created such a logjam that the "go-to-the-left-most-part-of-the-bridge-to-get-ahead" routine starts !!

First things first, they should start asking the cop to synchronize his stopping so that the logjam is cleared first instead of sympathizing with the auto or scooter which wants to join the mainstream traffic. So there should be 2 cops - 1 on the beginning of the bridge and another where he stands today. (Someday I'll even get his name methinks - the traffic moves so slowly there that you can read his "nameplate" on his shirt !!)

The other big thing that is needed is a rotary (for those who've been to the US will know what I'm talking about) at the Marathahalli ring road junction. I'm really awestruck at the cops who control traffic from 8 directions at peak time at this junction. Just imagine if there was a rotary here with signals and people yielding. This is the NEED of the hour at this place. Spare the poor cops for pete's sakes !!

That's all for now ... more later.

As mentioned in my first post I want this blog to reflect my frustrations at everything that's in Bangalore that's well, frustrating. It might be any of the following :

- Roads
- Cops
- Road Digging
- Traffic Signals
- Flyovers and their construction timelines (and anything else)

We'll add to the above as time flies but this post is going to be about some of the above.

Let's first take an objective look at some of the big problems I want to highlight :

- Road conditions - these are one of the worst I've come across anywhere in the world. From the POV of being in a metropolitan city (they say BLR is cosmopolitan) this city has one of the worst road systems I've ever seen. I've been in several cities across the world (Boston, NY, SF, Bangkok, Singapore, Miami and closer home in Chennai, Delhi) but this takes the absolute c-a-k-e. Some reasons :
- Potholes spring up as soon as it rains even for an hour.
- Potholes don't get filled up within reasonable amount of time by the organizations concerned (BCC,BDA, BWWSWWB - are there anymore I wonder)
- Some of these potholes develop into craters as days go by (sometimes within hours). Some frustrated citizens then cover up these craters with mud and stones and eventually they take the shape of mounds. Watch for these in Marathalli market. Some day I'll take a snap and post them here.
- Metalling of the roads leaves much to be desired. Cracks and fissures appear within no time
- Road planning - by this I mean the amount of time spent for an average commute from point X to point Y. This is never constant. Courtesy the traffic load at any given point of time. Also courtesy the number of people who do not want to maintain lane discipline.

I'll post more on this later.