Strategic Planning can Reduce Bengaluru's traffic Woes

Thursday, May 13, 2010

The garden city of the nation, is fast moving on the track of becoming the garbage city. The IT boom has turned out to be a boon and also a curse to the bangaloreans.Everyday i hear people saying 'Bangalore has gone from good to worse because of the IT sector', But they are the very same people who encourage their own children to get into IT and earn their living.

Let me stop complaining about the IT in Bangalore and say some of my plans for the banglore roads.The major component thats lacking today in the city is Planning. Yes, its true that unexpected population explosion, inefficient use of resources happened. But still i can see the lack of planning even today in Bangalore.

Me being a regular commuter on the Old Madras road, few days back i happened to experience one of the worst traffic jam's ever.Let me explain you a kinda solution for this problem using the images i have displayed here.

The junction from Ulsoor bus Depot which turn towards Ulsoor lake is always jammed.


As shown on the map the junctions looks like a triangle.Let us abstract it out to a plain view shown in the image below. The different colors indicate the different directions of the traffic flow.This kind of traffic arrangements requires the traffic police to maintain two signals, before the vehicles can move from ulsoor depot to ulsoor lake.
The picture below shows the current setup.Where there are two signals,we can see the abstract view of the current setup and how much problematic it is!!
With better planning they can actually eliminate both the traffic signals and create a free flow of traffic as shown in the map below.

The picture on the left is the new setup which i can suggest the traffic police to adopt...and theoretically we can see how much hassle free it can be.This can be the temporary solution to the old madras roads everyday traffic until the metro work finishes.The only negative part of this plan is tat the bus stand needs to be shifted. So a common man like me needs to walk some extra distance to catch his bus.But since already one side of the Ulsoor bus stand shifted to the other road, this wont be impossible.

But this 'solution', sorry again:) a 'work around' is theoretical, but until its actually employed and tried out, we never know whether it can work. According to me, this should smoothen the traffic flow, but with the bad roads, This can only assure to reduce 5-10 mins of your travel time on this road.

Finally what i wanted to say is Bangalore can be made a better place to commuters by proper planning. This might require the authorities to setup a proper planning committee.. but if there is already a planning committee, its better they include few people who usually use the roads and hence can reach to a better plan.