We have been making very slow progress on putting together this LAMP. Why not do an ideation exercise as part of the project online. For the LAMP, we talked of working on designated entry points to the local area, as in Whitefield. Take Marathahalli. During my use of bus in morning hours, my commute is from whitefield to HAL, I notice that significant numer of people change buses from Varthur/Airport road to Outer Ring Road in the morning and evening.
How would one place the bus stops and design walkways to make it easy for people to walk from ORR bus stands to Airport Road bus stands. Notie that effectively speaking, there are 8 places where buses stop around this junction
- on airport road, headed towards HAL side, stop before and after ORR signal
- on airpot road, coming in to whitefield, that big bus stop
- on service road when buses turn from old airport towards Outer Ring Road sarjapur road side
- On Outer Ring Road below, 2 stops before and after the underpass, in each direction.
Where exactly should these bus stands be placed, how can BDABBMP make it easy for us to change buses here? And also, not impact the movement of vehicular traffic on the road as much as possible.
Notie that there is also space for a BMTC Bus terminalm marked out in the map above. This terminal space is not used right now.
Comments
Bang on
I work in Doddanekundi and I face this problem if I have to travel towards Majestic, so is many employees and people who work in ORR. We take 500D, get down at Marathalli Bridge, walk very long on the bad roads to reach Airport Road and then take 335E.
Lot many employees in our office coming from Majestic side do not want to take 335E just because of this interchange problem. Those who are travelling towards South of ORR from Marathalli Bridge take 333W which runs between Majestic and Wipro Gate on Sarjapur Road covering Intel, Cisco, Honeywell etc. Some people travelling towards North of ORR from Majestic take the 333W, reach Innovative Multiplex, Cross the Road and take 500D.
A solution that always come to my mind is
1. For Airport Road Buses, have Bus Bay and Stop on the Bridge
2. Make ORR Buses to Stop exactly behind or below the bridge.
3. Provide Stairs on both side of the bridge ( 4 stair cases ).
Same Problem in Corporation Circle (Without Bridge)
Corporation / Basaveshwara Circle is similarly a huge interchange where thousands of people change buses (Problem right in front of BBMP office and faced by hundreds of BBMP employees).
1. People getting down in Front of Marthas Hospital and want to proceed towards Richmond Circle / Town Hall.
2. People getting down in front of Corporation Office and Want to travel towards Majestic or Mysore Bank / Richmond Circle.
3. People getting down in front of Kanteerava Stadium and want to travel towards Mysore Bank / Corporation Office .
People cross the roads with lot of risk. There are traffic lights which is not conveniently placed and which offer minimum signal cycle time for Pedestrains.
What we need is a conveniently placed Traffic Lights with good pedestrain cycle time or
an underpass connecting all the bus stops.
Retrofitting staircases?
Although I keep hearing about the staircase option, I always wonder if it is posisble to retrofit that. In case we provide a staircase at the marathahalli bridge, there should be provisions for a footpath till the bus stops on all sides, under the bridge, or there should be a waiting area and a bus stop directly under the bridge. Both options need space, which should be provisioned for, while building the underpass/over bridge.
I can see the same thing happening at a lot more places on ORR. People who used volvos 500a/c/d/k etc to reach the outer ring road offices - cisco/intel etc, find the buses going over the flyover, and they have towalk half the length of the flyover to reach their offices. Bus bays over the flyover, with staircases might have helped.. But again, now that the flyovers have been built, it might be difficult to include these!
More ideas? Marathahalli only pease
I we could prepare a creative plan for Marathahalli alone, can then propose for more such junctions (two big coridors intersect, only one underpass).
Any more ideas. So far
Just needs the basics, don't need a lot of creativity it seems. And I am pretty sure BDA/BBMP know the basics. It could just be that one of has to simply sit with them patiently to get things done properly. Notice that some work was done to create proper pavements, but pedestrians are not really using the new pavements as they are too narrow.
Bus Bays near Marathahalli Bridge
Although there has been few design changes for the bus bays on the Marathahalli junction, the junction is still chaotic for pedestrians and for people waiting at the bus stop.
Issues:
There are two lanes for buses to stop. But, no place marked for the travellers to wait. result is that, as soon as the bus comes to enter the second lane of bus stop, commuters are running across the first lane, which is pretty dangerous (or, maybe not, since the bus drivers are usually slow, and careful at this point!) and inconvenient!
Also, any bus stops in any lane! there is no guideline for the buses to stop in the frist lane, or in the second lane!
My suggestion is to make this a proper bus bay, with raised sections (similar to footpaths) for commuters to wait, and we need two rows of them, for either lane of bus stops.
Also, mark the first lane as lane for buses goign straight at kundenhalli junction, towards whitefield, hopefarm (G1 being an example), and mark the other lane of bus stop as the one for buses going towards ITPL (335E being an example.). This way, commuters can wait at the respective waiting area, and the running between the two platforms can be avoided! We can also have a small waiting area ahead of the BMTC bus stop for all the company shuttles going towards ITPL area to stop! The shuttles seem to be doing that even now, to avoid the mess of the BMTC bus stop. But, this would make it formal.
On a casual inspection, it seems that there is enough space to do all these at the junction. And if the waiting areas are designed properly, this could also be one way of ensuring that the bus stops are at a resonable distance away from the main junction! If the bus bays are built too close to the junction, the buses coming from ORR (say 500C), have a tough time, negotiating the turn to enter into the bus stop lanes!
True
http://praja.in/en/blog/s...
and
http://praja.in/en/blog/s...
Here are the 2 sets of earlier photos and comments, we also pointed out the same issue.
I don't know, how the condition there differs today, but yes it has be solved for the bus commuters.
Deepak