Infrastructural interventions made to ease traffic flow on the Outer Ring Road (ORR) has boomeranged, creating a traffic mess, especially in and around Yeshwantpur over the past two years.
Nayandahalli junction on ORR posed a hurdle for commuters for years. With the completion of the flyover and underpass at that junction, the traffic bottleneck has now been shifted to Kanteerava Studio junction and MES Railway Gate junction, where road infrastructure projects are in progress. It takes nearly an hour to traverse a distance of 4 km from the Kanteerava Studio junction to BEL Circle on the road on a two-wheeler.
Bangalore Development Authority (BDA), which has been constructing a flyover near the Kanteerava Studio junction for two years, has only completed a part of one of the ramps. This has led to traffic snarls at the busy junction which sees heavy traffic flow from Tumkur Road, Jalahalli, Mysore Road and Rajajinagar during peak hours. A traffic policeman at the junction said that it takes more than 15 minutes to cross the stretch.
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The situation is worse near the MES Railway Gate, near Goraguntepalya, where South Western Railway is constructing an overbridge across the two railway tracks slicing the ORR. As its construction has been stalled due to the land acquisition problems, the width of the carriageway available for two-way traffic on the stretch has been reduced to less than 30 feet.
Every time the railway gate is closed to let a train pass, vehicles pile up to a distance of nearly 2 km on either side of the level-crossing. And, it takes nearly 45 minutes for the traffic to clear. Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic West) S. Girish said that movement of lorries and multi-axle vehicles adds to the traffic mess on the ORR.