Bengaluru: The Karnataka Road Development Corporation Limited (KRDCL), has embarked on an ambitious project for the construction of Elevated Corridors with dedicated lane for public transport in Bengaluru city. The project will be implemented in four phases and is designed to alleviate congestion, provide unhindered travel, and reduce travel time.

Commenting on the situation Mr. B.S. Shivakumar, Managing Director KRDCL said, “The government is looking at an integrated answer to address the transport issues. The proposed elevated corridor project that we are undertaking will be a critical component of the solution. This along with the existing suburban train network, current and proposed metro network, flyovers, ROB’s and ring-roads will significantly reduce the woes of the people of Bengaluru. This will serve a boon to Bengaluru’s transport infrastructure which is bursting from its seems today”

Bengaluru has a transport network includes the Bangalore Commuter Rail and Bangalore Metro which cover a significant part of the city and roadways such as the Bangalore Outer ring road and road over/under bridges. The elevated road corridor project will work in tandem with the existing infrastructure to alleviate commuters time related problems. Thus, the first most obvious step to solving the commuter’s problems was to increase the overall capacity of network.

In Bangalore it is assumed that any car journey will encounter high traffic. “Hebbal to the Silk board takes the average person 100 minutes and the simple 15 kilometres from Hebbal to Lalbagh takes 60 minutes. Further, peak hour is becoming more and more unpredictable as office timings no longer remain rigid.  The proposed North-South, East-West, and centrally based elevated corridors to ease out traffic congestion all over our city. These will be constructed as 87.87 kilometres of multi lane roads will ensure that it will take no longer than 45 minutes to reach any part of the city. Once the first phase is completed, the travel time from Hebbal to Silk Board junction will be reduced from 100 minutes to 35 minutes”, added Mr. B.S. Shivakumar.

These elevated roads will have a dedicated bus lane and bus stops at three km interval’s making public transport points more accessible. These time-saving corridors also are structured to save lives. They will be closed to two and three wheelers reducing accidents. Lesser signals and bottlenecks will also reduce the idle time of vehicles and thus make the air less polluted and reduce the carbon footprint of Bangalore as a city.

Being able to make it from KR Puram to Yeshawanthapura in 30 minutes and Varthur Kodi to Lalbagh in 20 minutes is set to become a reality for Bangalore.

Bengaluru has been growing at 8.5% per annum as compared to the world average of 2.8% per annum in terms of the wold’s major cities, was just like its tier one peers till industries such as IT and Biotech came in and changed garden city forever. Since just the last census, Bangalore has exponentially more people, standing at about 8.5 million today. This rise has mostly been due to all the new jobs and opportunities and the city is constantly making space to accommodate them.

The Silicon Valley of India has had a phenomenal story. India’s 5^th most populous city started this journey in the early 1980’s at about161sq.km and has grown almost 360% to above 709sq. km today. The GDP of $110 billon is just another indicator of how this cultural amalgamation of a city made it work.  Between all the big industries currently head quartered here, Bangalore is home to 8 billionaires and currently contributes to 85% of the Karnataka State economy.  Bengaluru bills 35% of India’s IT exports and the pharma industry has also found a home with over 40% of all biotech companies in India.

Exponential growth, comes with its set of problems, and transport infrastructure is a critical component. Today there are more than 500 cars for ever kilometre of road, this mean a car at every two metres and with the current road situation, this is a huge problem. The problem is gigantic and the solution is complicated. This will require intricate planning and multiple modes of transport options.