Work is under way to call tenders to build tunnel roads in the city in the next 45 days, Deputy Chief Minister and Bengaluru Development Minister D.K. Shivakumar said on Thursday. This has given new momentum to the tunnel road project, which has drawn much opposition from civic activists and urban mobility experts in the city.
“We had called for a global expression of interest (EOI) to come up with a Comprehensive Bengaluru City Road Infrastructure Plan to decongest the city. A total of nine companies from across the world have participated in the EOI round, of which eight companies have qualified. We will soon select a company from among these eight to be the consultant on the project,” Mr. Shivakumar said.
“Should the tunnel road be a four-lane road or a six-lane road? Where should the tunnel road open to the roadway above and should we build tunnel roads only in the core city or extend them to the entire city? These are some of the questions we are looking at. The company that will be selected as a consultant will submit a detailed report on the same,” he said, adding that now that bigger tunnel-boring machines have been deployed elsewhere in the country, where tunnel roads are being built, tunnel roads have become more feasible.
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) called a short-term tender to choose a consultant to do a detailed feasibility study (DFS) for the Comprehensive Bengaluru City Road Infrastructure Plan on September 30, a copy of which has been accessed by The Hindu.
While Mr. Shivakumar said the DFS was regarding tunnel roads, the tender floated by the civic body lists 12 high-density corridors, including Outer Ring Road, Ballari Road, Old Madras Road, Old Airport Road, Sarjapur Road, Hosur Road, Bannerghatta Road, and Kanakapura Road, totalling 190 km, where intervention is needed. The tender does not stipulate the intervention has to be a tunnel road only. “To prepare a comprehensive traffic management plan for the proposal of vehicular tunnel/grade separator/road-widening in selected corridors,” the tender document says. The selected company will get two months’ time to come up with a DFS and suggestions along these high-density corridors.
Earlier, Mr. Shivakumar had batted for a proposal to build tunnel roads along the earlier proposed network of elevated corridors totalling a length of 99 km, crisscrossing the city. However, the short-term tender for a DFS called now is more open-ended on both the kind of intervention and the alignment, even as Mr. Shivakumar has been championing tunnel roads.
A senior civic official said the tunnel road project, if found feasible and selected, was still at a very nascent stage. “Once the selected consultant comes up with a DFS and a proposal for interventions along these 12 high-density corridors, that needs to be put to debate and cleared by the State government, following which a company will be tasked with preparing the detailed project report (DPR), following which we need to divide the project into several phases and issue contracts for the works. This will take at least two more years,” the official said.
Meanwhile, the project will require several thousands of crore and a cash-strapped State government should also explore options, including raising capital from the market, which will take time, sources said.
