JOIN USWith the government scrapping the steel flyover project, the focus is back on the widening of Ballari Road.
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) needs to widen the road to ease traffic snarls. In the name of addressing traffic congestion, the government had proposed the steel flyover whose estimated cost was escalated from Rs 1,350 crore to around Rs 2,200 crore.
The main stumbling block to widening the road is acquiring a portion of Palace Grounds from the erstwhile royal family of Mysuru.
The High Court of Karnataka recently ordered the BBMP to speed up the land acquisition by issuing the Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) to the royals.
A senior BBMP engineer said, “The first step is to get the land and translocate the trees. Trees which cannot be translocated will have to be cut down. Thereafter, green spaces on the road will have to be increased to compensate for the loss of trees.”