Airport metro to undo all the hard and costly work of white-topping ORR

The BBMP spent Rs 15 crore to white-top every kilometre of the six-lane Outer Ring Road. The airport metro line is set to undo all the work. DH FILE PHOTO

The BBMP spent Rs 15 crore to white-top every kilometre of the six-lane Outer Ring Road. The airport metro line is set to undo it all. DH FILE

White-topping was once dubbed as the ultimate panacea for all the road troubles faced by lakhs of motorists. So they endured long, taxing hours trapped in impossibly arduous traffic gridlocks. But just when they thought the white-topped Outer Ring Road (ORR) would be theirs for a smooth ride, the airport metro line threatens to break it all open to erect its pillars.

In utter disbelief and dismay, road users are wondering aloud with collective angst: "Is this some kind of a joke? Did the Bruhath Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) not know that the metro pillars are just round the corner? Did the two agencies not coordinate, plan and draw their road maps together?"

First, the facts: The Palike spent an estimated Rs 15 crore to white-top every kilometre of the six-lane ORR. Since the median is too narrow to accommodate pillars on vast stretches of this arterial road, the Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited (BMRCL) will cut through the white-top layer.

As it prepares to turn a construction nightmare for years, the ORR is now seen as a classic case of poor inter-agency coordination, poor planning and unacceptable wastage of taxpayers' money. In support of this contention, motorists, mobility experts and urban planners all point to a now-forgotten project proposed on the same road: The Bust Rapid Transit System (BRTS).

BRTS dumped

The BRTS was designed to link Silk Board Junction and Hebbal, its dedicated bus lane running right in the middle of the ORR. The previous state government had even assured budgetary support for the project estimated to cost about Rs 500. A high-powered committee, chaired by the chief secretary, had given the go-ahead for the project.

This was three years after the commissioning of the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA, then called BIA after Bengaluru) in May 2008. An airport metro line was nowhere on the drawing board. Based on a World Resources Institute (WRI) India report, the BRTS was billed as the only solution to decongest the already crowded ORR.

But, as urbanist V Ravichandar recalls, the BRTS lost out to the metro. The decision was announced after a meeting four years ago, where mobility experts, urban planners and other key stakeholders collectively argued for the BRTS in the wake of the Bogota experience. "The system’s love for the metro is overarching," he notes.

So if the metro was to come up on this ORR stretch, why did the BBMP not leave the space for the pillars during white-topping? But by then, the metro along the ORR had changed its alignment first as a separate line till Hebbal, then as an airport line heading right at Hennur and back again through Hebbal. The alignment change was well-publicised, but the white-topping work continued.

"We don’t have a single, holistic way to plan mobility solutions in a comprehensive way," Ravichandar says. "The BBMP, the BMRCL, the BMTC, the BDA and other agencies don’t sit together. They work in silos. There is no holistic central plan where all the parts fit."

Interference risk

Urbanist Ashwin Mahesh agrees: "Since there is no comprehensive plan, no project can be executed without the risk of interference from another agency. Mobility projects should have a network plan, be it the metro, the BRTS or even cycling lanes. Without coordination, you cannot expect an integrated approach. We have lost the plot."

The only way out appears to be a robust Unified Metropolitan Transport Authority (UMTA) for the city. Contends urban mobility activist Sathya Sankaran, "The UMTA/BMLTA legislation should clearly say that the BMTC or the BMRCL should listen to the authority. For this to happen, it should be headed by a senior-level officer."

The authority should be empowered to decide the metro alignment, and be adequately staffed to cover the entire city spanning multiple agencies, says Sankaran. While this is still a vision, the airport metro line is all set to transform the ORR with no visible plan to fit either the cycling or bus priority lane.