Bengaluru roads: Pothole ridden BEL Circle leaves commuters worried

Circle, an important junction that connects North Bengaluru with the rest of the city on Outer Ring Road (ORR) is dotted with potholes. Though the junction sees heavy traffic and vehicle density, the Bengaluru North City corporation officials have not done much to ensure that the ride is smooth.

Right at the middle of the circle, potholes are so bad that many commuters have suffered back injuries.

“There is so much traffic at the junction that many times we will have to wait for multiple signals to pass through. Hence, we tend to drive fast to pass through the circle and that’s when the potholes in the circle hurt the most. All the vehicles are in such a hurry that we cannot even slow down to navigate through the potholes,” said Aditi B, a regular commuters through the stretch. 

To add to this, the commuters moving from BEL Circle towards Yeshwantpur and Malleshwaram have a much bigger problem since both the Dr Shyama Prasad Mookerjee flyover and the M S Ramaiah are in a bad shape.

Bumpy ride

While the flyover has only a few potholes and can be navigated through, the M S Ramaiah road only offers a bumpy ride since the road has not been restored properly after the Karnataka Power Transmission Corporation Limited (KPTCL) took up underground cabling works.

The road is a major connecting stretch and also houses many educational institutions. “For more than six months, we had to navigate through half dug up roads. Traffic snarls were common. Now, they have only restored the road in patches and the road is so uneven that you cannot ride through 100 m smoothly,” said Suhasini M, a student of M S Ramaiah Institute of Technology and a regular commuter on the stretch. 

Many students waiting at the bus stops also complained of dust and a lack of a proper waiting area after the KPTCL works were completed.

The bad state of the roads frequently results in traffic snarls and traffic police working in the area said that additional staff are deputed near the MS Ramaiah road often.

Senior officials from the Bengaluru North Corporation said that the works at the BEL Circle were put on hold since there were discussions about taking up the connecting roads for white topping. “We were told that white topping might start soon. So, we did not take up any work,” said an engineer from the Bengaluru North Corporation.