Too many red signals stall signal-free corridor project

The traffic chaos and accidents at major bottlenecks in the City would have come down had the signal-free corridors proposed by BBMP in 2009 been implemented. BBMP had proposed 11 signal corridors to ease congestion at major junctions. However, most of them have been in cold storage due to a number of issues.

One of the BBMP officials said, “These corridors would have literally connected the nooks and corners of the City. The total cost was estimated to be around Rs 3,600 crore and the World Bank was ready to assist us. Tenders were also floated for project implementation. But issues such as land acquisition, failure of tenders, non-cooperation from public and a few local corporators and MLAs made it difficult to implement the project.”

He said residents in areas where the corridors were supposed to be constructed got a stay order from the High Court for the project and the World Bank withdrew support for it.

Some of the signal-free corridors were proposed on Hosur Road, Old Madras Road, Adugodi to Silk Board Junction, Sarjapur Road, Old Airport Road and Rajkumar Road.

“While protests by residents stopped us from implementing the signal-free corridor project on Sarjapur Road, no work was taken up on Hosur Road as the tender that was floated failed,” said S Somashekhar, BBMP chief engineer (major roads).

BBMP is currently working on the construction of a signal-free corridor on Old Airport Road and Rajkumar Road. The officials said that soon, work will start at Nayandahalli and at Hope Farm Junction.

Meanwhile, the Palike has newly proposed six corridor projects in the city. Infra Support Engineering Consultants that was roped in by the Palike to prepare a pre-feasibility report of the corridors has already submitted the report to the BBMP Traffic Engineering Cell.

New projects
The new projects listed include three elevated corridors - North-South corridor from Central Silk Board to Hebbal, East-West corridor from KR Puram to Goraguntepalya and East-West Corridor from Jnanabharthi to Varthur Kodi. Also on the cards are the construction of connecting corridors - the stretch from Agara to Kalasipalyam, Richmond Road to Ulsoor and Kalyan Nagar Junction on Outer Ring Road (ORR) to St John’s Church Road and Wheeler Road Junction.

“We have suggested to the Palike to execute the project on a Public Private Partnership (PPP) model as the cost is huge. However, the final call has to be taken by higher officials in the Palike,” said Ratnakar Reddy, Managing Director of Infra Support.