The longest National Highway in the country, NH7, connecting Varanasi and Kanyakumari, is famous neither for mythology surrounding those two towns, nor for the lively towns it connects. Instead, the highway’s claim to national and international fame is a 9km jam on a stretch known as the Hosur Road in namma bengaLooru.
To ease the congestion between Silkboard Junction and Electronics City on Hosur Road, the NHAI commissioned the Bangalore Elevated Tollway Limited (BETL) in early 2006. BETL is a special purpose vehicle created by the joint venture consortium of Maytas Infra , Nagarjuna Construction Company Ltd. (NCC) and Soma Enterprises Limited (SEL), to enhance the capacity of the road by constructing a new four-lane elevated tollway. (Hence the name.)
Apart from this, improvements to the "at grade" part include making it a 3x3 lane highway and adding 2 lane access roads over the storm water drains on both sides of it. Six underpasses for pedestrians along the 9 km stretch are also planned since the highway median prohibits pedestrian crossing.
While not much is known about how the road will look at the Silkboard end, Soma Enterprises has published renders of how the road is to look at the Electronic Eity end. (Click on the images for larger views**)
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Shown below is the traffic flow diagram at the Electronics City end of the tollway based on these illustrations. The thick lines correspond to tollway(T/W) lanes, the thin lines correspond to highway(H/W) lanes, the black lanes are elevated, and the gray to black lanes are the ramps.
The flow to and from the tollway itself is easy to understand and appears to have been designed to flow smoothly.
But on the at grade highway, curiously, there seems to be no direct way for somebody from Silkboard or the BMIC PRR to get to Phase1. One has to either go all the way to point <F> further South of the interchange, make a U-turn, head North again and then take exit E1* to Phase1. Or they have to take E2 on the highway, make U somewhere within Phase2 and then take ramps R6A-R6B before taking E1.
Similarly, it appears that for somebody from the EC Phase1 to take the highway South towards Attibele, or to go to EC Phase2, they have to initially head North on the highway, and then take a U-turn at <E>. <E> is also perhaps the point where you take a turn to get on to the BMIC PRR towards Mysore road. This could be a major bottle neck, because all this traffic is entering the highway from left and has to move to the right, to make the U-turn.
Around the interchange, the flow on the "at grade" highway also does not appear to be smooth. Around the interchange, the highway trickles down to 2 lanes in each direction. The flow from Silkboard and from BMIC PRR to either campuses of EC faces a 3 lanes to 2 lanes pinch at congestion point <A>. At <D> again, there is a 4 lane to 3 lane pinch: 2 lanes from EC Phase1 merge with 2 lanes carrying highway and EC Phase2 traffic heading North on the highway. At <B>, the 2 tollway lanes conflict with 2 highway lanes heading South. Only <C> is a 3 lane to 4 lane split that separates traffic towards EC and tollway to Silkboard from the remaining highway traffic headed North and should be easy.
Irrespective of which direction you are headed, if you are talking the at-grade highway, you are in for atleast 3 pinch points. Considering that the Hosur Road consistently clocks a massive 1.2 lakh PCUs/day, these pinches(including u-turns at <E> and <F> ) could be significant.
* E1,E2, R1 R2 <A> etc., are names introduced here to discuss the flow. They are not thus named by BETL.
** Capture Credits: indiansunite @ SSC
Also read Future of Silkboard Junction for a take on the other end of the tollway.
Comments
When is this slated to
When is this slated to complete?
There must be many more bottlenecks on NH7 in Namma Bengalooru...
2nd or 3rd quarter '08 i
Move the congestion to Hosur
I will keep my fingers crossed. Each Flyover seems to move the traffic to the next junction. I hope the elevated road does not move the congestion to Hosur ;-)
I also hope theres no pending land acquisitions from our mannina magas.. I dont know if you have been on the NICE road connecting Mysore Road to Kanakapura Road... its great until the last 100 metres (at the K'pura junction) where the road goes from Great to Gross...
Addendum to BET
Some points on BETL
Here is what a colleague of mine (Mr. Venugopala Rao aka VMGR) has to say about these.
[Quote]
Now that was a good one but kind of confusing....esp the picture....it needs to be presented in a more readable format...I am sure they are going to have cloverleaf intersections at NICE road junction and similarly at the EC phase 1.This one mentions that the grade separator ends at EC phase 1 but I have noticed activity beyond that upto phase 2.There was a ppt circulated sometime back in Infosys that depicted it properly. But my solution would have been thus. Not sure of the cost implications though. Our idea of building this highway is to ease the traffic congestion from SB to EC.Have a huge parking lot or bus transit at silkboard.Company buses get ppl from all parts of the city and ppl alight here to board the E-city express.Have trains that run every 2 mins with 4 coaches each from SB to EC. We could have special ones to employees of various companies and similar ones to the general public. The general one could stop at bommana halli and other bus stop points that are currently in place. There could be different platforms/terminals for company and general trains as one may say.These terminate at a point in EC from where official buses could pick up their employees and drop them at their gate via shuttle services. Just imagine....for any infra project it is derived or ascertained based on few factors:1. PCUs on the road2. Initial cost3. Maintenance cost4. Scope or percentage of increase in traffic ascertained for a specific no of years (could be 2, 5, 10 or 20) depending on the analysis. Once that tollway is open, people would prefer to come by cars and thus as the capacity of EC expands with more and more buildings coming up and more companies opening up shops here, once can expect choking on the elevated highway too. Has jayadeva flyover served any purpose? Well no. The only flyovers I see that have served purpose are:1. Hebbal flyover2. Mysore road flyover (to some extent for ppl directly going to corporation circle/lal bagh)3. Dairy circle. --VR[Unquote]
Thought of posting it on his behalf here.
Tarlesubba, do you have any info about this road being extended till e-city phase-2?
-Shastri
-Shastri
Format
-Shastri
Some clarifications
VR