Residents vow protests as BBMP starts work on Sivananda flyover

Residents are up in arms against the BBMP for starting the work on the  controversial steel flyover project at  Sivananda Circle in central Bengaluru.  

At  a meeting on Saturday, residents of Srikanta Layout and Madhava Nagar resolved to protest against the 326.5-metre flyover sometime next week.  

"The flyover plan was made in 2011 and might have been necessary at that time. But now, it is not at all necessary. Instead of building a flyover here,  the BBMP should widen the space near the railway underpass," said Chitra Venkatesh, a resident.

She added that commuting had become  easier after the opening  of  Namma Metro's Green  Line and that there was not  much traffic at the
intersection.  

"We plan to challenge this project as the BBMP failed to hold a public consultation," she said.  

Srinivas Alavilli of Citizens for Bengaluru, a non-profit organisation that has been organising protests against "unnecessary and short-sighted flyovers in the city, said, "Local residents as well as other concerned citizens are  opposing this flyover. The Rs 50-crore expenditure will do more harm than good. We  are protesting against the feudal mindset of the  municipal body."

He  said that they didn't have any problem with the use of steel, but were against the  concept of building flyovers to  ease traffic.

Dr Ashish Verma of the Centre for infrastructure, Sustainable Transportation and Urban Planning (CiSTUP) at IISc,  said, "The proposed steel flyover is not even a short-term solution. It will worsen the  traffic bottlenecks. There will be a huge pile-up of vehicles on the flyover itself."