Bangalore Traffic: Tunnels, Politics, Corruption

Last night, a friend brought up the desolate topic of traffic. Now when I say desolate, I mean in conversation of course. And yet, we had such a spirited discussion about the possible solutions to this frustrating everyday… nuisance, that I’m actually writing about it today.

The topic was initially kicked off with the introduction of one of the possible solutions the government was looking into for the Bangalore traffic. Apparently, they’re looking toward experts from around the world, outside of our country, to explore this problem. I stated my opinion regarding this as an unreasonable path to go down. After my short trip across the four South-East Asian countries, one thing I knew for sure was adapting the workings of the traffic intricacies of another country wasn’t going to help with Bangalore’s traffic problems. What I understood even better was despite our shortcomings, the way we handle our traffic is something to be proud of, because - not only is our vehicle density much much higher, but our roads and transport infrastructure are far too bad as well. And we’re able to navigate these spaces and take care of traffic and figure a way out of jams even with such structural difficulties? Kudos to our people, right?

For instance, I saw this so-called traffic jam in Kuala Lumpur that took vehicles an hour to cross an intersection and get to the next road. Not only was this barely traffic but there wasn’t even any real jam, it was just a tiny slew of vehicles, patiently standing one behind the other. No other road to go through, none of that. Was it real patience though? That’s a good question. Worse than this was what I saw in Ho Chi Minh, vehicles - especially 2-wheelers - riding atop sidewalks. No, no, not one, not two, an entire slew of them! And it wasn’t all that much traffic, just a lot of impatience I suppose? I mean, we see that happen too, you know, when you’ve waited in the same place for over a half-hour and you know this traffic isn’t moving any time soon and you’ve been glued to that spot except maybe to adjust your seat a little bit - yeah, then you see a couple of two-wheelers, the drivers frustrated, on the sidewalk. What I saw in Ho Chi Minh on the other hand was when the signal gave you the green light and you couldn’t wait to get ahead.

Such a huge difference right?

And the roads were SO good there. Clearly marked one-ways and signals at every intersection. Beautiful roads and not exactly the highest vehicle density.

My point is, the problems with Bangalore traffic are unique to our country. The people most experienced with these issues would be the locals. On a regular basis, they see vehicle movement, they see the worst parts of the roads, they know where they get stuck the most and most of all they’re familiar with how the others around them drive. These people have a different way of dealing with this particular traffic than what an external person could only even begin to understand after at least a few weeks of them witnessing this as well. Paper and pen will only get you so far - especially with traffic.

Anyway, moving on! My friend then mentioned how D.K Shivakumar - the Deputy Chief Minister of Karnataka, the state for which Bengaluru is the capital district - wanted to bring in more tunnels to solve our traffic problems. Turns out, he got the idea on a trip to Singapore and asked the engineers to do something like that. The engineers promptly got back to him with the facts, which were: this is not something that can be done in Bengaluru, given the area and the basics, it’s simply not feasible. A possible Rs.50,000 crore project, has so far gotten mixed reviews. While the people on the team did agree to it and say it’d be a great way to ease traffic, other experts have opposing views.

My reaction to the idea was immediate. Tunnels or any other infrastructure wasn’t going to be the best way forward. We are a city with issues of congestion. Unless you’re going to rip out entire structures and start from scratch - which you obviously cannot do - the traffic is only going to get more and more congested, the more you add to it. Unlike Singapore, we are not a pure concrete jungle.

The metro construction that’s been consuming the entire city for years now, upon completion can be a huge source of alleviation to the current traffic issues. Apart from that, the major sources of traffic as seen by us civilians, who actually use most of these congested roads the majority of the time anyway, are the bottlenecks and irregular movements of city buses - which through no fault of their own are a bane to our traffic.

The first problem is the cause of so many delays and jams even further away from the actual bottleneck itself. And the second? The buses have no separate lanes or proper areas for a bus stop. They end up stopping in the middle of the traffic disrupting the movements of everyone around them. (I’d quickly like to add here, I have tremendous admiration for our buses, especially the drivers of these buses. The skills they’ve honed over the years. They can drive. Unlike most other people on our roads :’) )

These are just some of the issues that we could point out in the brief conversation we had on the way to a restaurant, during which time my friend even suggested a few possible solutions.

While road expansion is not feasible, the usage of government-owned areas to help with safe and easy movement of public transport -like they’re doing with the metro line to the airport through the airforce land - is. If you’re going to spend Rs.50,000 crore on tunnels that we all know are not going to be well-maintained or even well-constructed for the sole purpose of more commissions down the road - why not spend a little money toward, at the very least, renting a few spaces so there’s no two-wheeler ramming into a person getting off the bus? Or a bus ramming into a two-wheeler? These are close calls that happen every day. This is the level of cautiousness with which everyone here needs to drive, despite being stuck for hours on end in the tiring heat and deathly pollution.

https://www.hindustantimes.com/cities/bengaluru-news/bengaluru-traffic-latest-news-dk-shivakumar-tunnel-highway-network-singapore-traffic-jam-congestion-101689218697776.html

https://indianexpress.com/article/cities/bangalore/dk-shivakumar-feasibility-report-tunnel-roads-decongest-bengaluru-traffic-8770225/#:~:text=what%20police%20say-,The%20meeting%20is%20among%20a%20series%20of%20discussions%20convened%20by,to%20the%20outer%20ring%20roads.