Vehicle users have started bypassing toll booths on the newly-opened Bengaluru-Mysuru expressway, a day after authorities started collecting tolls.
On Wednesday, the second day of toll collection, hundreds of vehicles were seen taking an unmarked service road just before the Kaniminike toll booth on Bengaluru's outskirts as a means to bypass the toll.
The service road merges with the expressway further down the road from the toll booth, making this an easy channel for drivers to avoid paying the toll and still access the expressway.
B T Sridhar, project director, Ramanagar of National Highways Authority of India, alleged that people were forcefully getting onto a under-construction service road.
Speaking to reporters, he said that the reason the service road work was left incomplete was that people would then only take that and not pay the toll at all.
Speaking to DH later, he said, "Work on the service road was paused briefly because of a high court stay, which was only vacated last week before Prime Minister Modi’s arrival. We have begun work on completing the service road and the forced entry points will be closed in due time.”
This comes a day after protests broke out against toll collection on the 55.63 km-long Bengaluru-Nidaghatta stretch of the expressway, with many commuters arguing that they needn’t pay to use the road when it is being built on taxpayers’ money.
Drivers coming from Ramanagara and Mysuru sides were forced to hit the brakes and swerve a little to the left near the Bidadi bypass – all to avoid ramming into one of the many barricades put up to indicate ongoing repair work of an expansion joint. This was an expansion joint repair work that Mysore-Kodagu MP Pratap Simha claimed was “minor”.
Although several eateries were set up along the stretch of road after the toll, most of them were shut and devoid of any activity.
A resident of the area complained that nearly 60 per cent of the hotels along the expressway were forced to shut following anticipated losses once construction began on the expressway.
There also appeared to be no functioning public toilets on the side of the roads, unless one wanted to take their chances to explore a shuttered hotel’s premises.
Locals who wanted to get to the other side after alighting from a bus had to walk further to get to an underpass for vehicles, for there are no skywalks or underpasses for pedestrians, which poses a problem to residents of nearby towns.
Nithin Ashwath, an architect who travels back and forth between Channapatna and Bengaluru every two days, believes the toll amount is pointless.
“Most people are finding ways to use service roads around the expressway to get on the service roads any way. Why must people cluelessly pay a hefty amount when others can use the road free of charge?”
In his opinion, opening the expressway to the public was a hasty decision taken by the government to look good before elections.
“This should have been a more carefully thought out plan because not only are people being made to pay toll for something built out of taxpayers’ money, businesses are incurring losses too,” he said.
A local shop owner acknowledged that while the expressway was beneficial to motorists looking to travel faster, this dealt a big blow to local businesses that depended on travellers.
“Not too many people come down to the service road unless they need to get to one of the villages or towns around the expressway, which means that most of my earnings will now come from local residents or curious travellers stopping by,” he said.
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