Minister to discuss flyover project at Manipal Hospital junction on Bengaluru-Mysuru Highway

Minster for Urban Development B.S. Suresh will be arriving in Mysuru on Monday and hold a meeting with officials to review the progress of work on the preparation of a Detailed Project Report (DPR) for construction of a flyover at Bengaluru-Mysuru Highway’s junction with Outer Ring Road near Manipal Hospital in Mysuru.

According to an official statement here, Mr. Suresh will arrive in the city on Monday and hold a meeting on the infrastructure projects with the officials concerned at Government Guest House in Nazarbad.

The Manipal Hospital junction from where the Bengaluru-Mysuru Highway starts was already notorious for traffic bottlenecks. With the volume of traffic increasing sharply after the expansion of the highway into a ten-lane road, the waiting time for motorists passing the junction has increased particularly during weekends and during holiday season like the recent Dasara festival.

During peak hours, vehicles including trucks plying on the Outer Ring Road, besides four wheelers and two wheelers tend to pile up at the junction waiting for the green light at the signals.

The demand for making the junction signal-free for seamless movement of traffic has become more pronounced after the Bengaluru-Mysuru Highway was declared open.

Realising the need to ease the bottlenecks and facilitate free flow of traffic at the junction, National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) had earlier proposed a Clover Leaf Interchange or Clover Shaped Interchange that envisages construction of one or more ramps to allow traffic flow from one or more roads through a junction without actually criss-crossing or disturbing the movement of traffic on the other streams.

However, the full Clover Leaf Interchange project was shelved in view of the prohibitive costs. Later, the NHAI came up with a proposal to construct a flyover, rotary, and underpass, the costs for which was found to be relatively far less.

While the flyover with six lanes was meant for vehicles plying on the Bengaluru-Mysuru Highway for entering and exiting the city directly, the underpass would provide for seamless bi-directional traffic movement on the Outer Ring Road. The rotary would facilitate traffic cross over from the highway, the Ring Road’s service roads or vice versa.

Peripheral Ring Road

Mr. Suresh, during his visit to the city on Monday, is also expected to review the progress of work on the preparation of the Detailed Project Report (DPR) for the peripheral ring road.

Mysuru Urban Development Authority (MUDA) had proposed to construct a Peripheral Ring Road spanning about 73 km as the traffic on the existing 43-long Outer Ring Road was already nearing saturation along many stretches.