This story is from June 14, 2018

What a jam! 10% of Bengaluru works on this 17km stretch

From taking one hour to get out of an office park to getting stuck on rainy days for more than two at the same place, people who work in the tech parks between Marathahalli and Silk Board have seen it all.
What a jam! 10% of Bengaluru works on this 17km stretch
Vehicles heading towards hebbal K R Puram and Old airport road stranded in traffic jam at Marathahalli Outer Ring Road in Bengaluru (File photo)
BENGALURU: From taking one hour to get out of an office park to getting stuck on rainy days for more than two at the same place, people who work in the tech parks between Marathahalli and Silk Board have seen it all.
The phenomenal growth of technology campuses over the past decade along the Outer Ring Road (ORR) between the Central Silk Board and KR Puram has created a traffic nightmare along the 17km corridor.
The Outer Ring Road Companies Association (ORRCA) estimates that nearly 1 million people – about 10% of the city’s population – work on that stretch. While the presence of many of the biggest global corporate names along that road has raised Bengaluru’s stature on the international map, it has also placed a huge burden on the transport infrastructure.
major
An Intel employee, who commutes daily from his office on ORR to his residence near Hebbal, said it takes close to 2.5 hours to travel the distance of 25km though he ensures he leaves office by 4pm. Since the service roads are narrow, it takes time to get out of the Intel campus, and then it takes 15 minutes just to take a U-turn and come to the other side of the road. And then there’s the infamous traffic congestion near the junction of K R Puram and Mahadevpura.
“I have seen people get down from a bus at one end of this jam, walk up to the other end, and take another bus. It’s faster,” he said.
Anurag Tyagi, president of ORRCA and head of corporate services at Morgan Stanley, said inadequate infrastructure on the road is reaching crisis levels. “Member companies on ORR were forced to trigger emergency business continuity plans in October during the heavy rains. This drew global attention to Bengaluru’s ability to handle further growth,” he said. An employee with business analytics company Bridgei2i in the
Cessna Business Park said the service roads remain in a bad shape, even though parts of them were repaired recently. “The entry and exit to the park is so congested that often I have to wait inside my cab for nearly 20 minutes before I can get in,” he said. Sushmita drives every morning from Koramangala to her workplace in the RMZ Ecoworld campus. On most days, traffic is chock-a-block near the Agara lake and that continues till the Bellandur signal.
More and more companies are allowing employees to leave earlier to avoid the evening congestion. If it was 4.30 and 5 pm earlier, many now leave around
4. But 4 pm too is now becoming crowded. Many of the shuttle buses of companies like Cisco and LG leave around that time, adding to the congestion, said Shamala, who works in an MNC in the Cessna park. Shamala recollected a rainy day last year when it took two hours to get out of the park.
For Nikita, the distance between her home in HSR Layout and office in Cessna is not more than 6 km, but she says it takes one hour to commute on most days. “I am also scared of the service roads, especially at those points where traffic merges with the main road. Nobody waits, everyone wants to go first,” she said.
Shamala said the government needs to build a good public transport system on the stretch. “The metro rail should come up quickly. At the same time, we as citizens should follow rules on the service road,” she said. Nikita, who moved to Bengaluru about a year ago, said she was open to using buses if the ride was comfortable. “We need more buses. Then I wouldn’t have to pay surge prices on Ola and Uber,” she said.
End of Article
FOLLOW US ON SOCIAL MEDIA