Road dividers more of a threat than a convenience

The uneven and unscientific road dividers in the City are posing a grave threat to the motorists.

Instead of regulating traffic, most of the road dividers in the City are leading to accidents and traffic jams, says T M Shivakumar, a resident of Victoria Layout who conducted a survey and took pictures of the dividers from Brigade Road to Marathahalli, a couple of months back.

“The road divider near Brigade Towers, Brigade Road has an uneven height. Similarly, the height of the dividers on Old Airport Road near Airforce Command Hospital is not uniform,” Shivakumar said.

Civic analyst V Ravichander said that at a few places, including on Hosur Road between Forum Mall and Madiwala Junction, the civic authorities have laid loose cement bricks as divider. The haphazardly placed bricks are leading to many accidents, he added. 

“The cement blocks that are not fixed properly can prove dangerous for motorists. Also, people can easily shift them to make way for themselves,” he added.
 Ravichander pointed out that ideally the height of the metallic dividers should be at least five feet, while the height of cement medians should be 1 to 1.5 feet.

Unscientific
“The road dividers in the City are totally unscientific. The citizens, who try to shift the blocks for their convenience, make matters worse. This could be avoided if the height of the dividers is increased to five feet and are fixed to ground,” he added.

“The reason why there are uneven dividers is that the Palike started laying them since 2007. The height of the dividers then was fixed at half a metre and over the years the size of the dividers has changed based on the requirement, traffic volume and condition of roads. Some of the dividers in the City have been laid by the traffic police and the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) as well,” a BBMP engineer told Deccan Herald.

The Palike has built dividers over an estimated stretch of over 100 km till date.

The engineer said that under the Nagarotthana scheme, the civic agency has received a grant of Rs 10 crore for construction of road dividers and humps this year. “The tender has been floated. Henceforth, we will build the dividers of height not less than one metre,” he added.