Sankey Road to lose trees

21 January 2009 - 10:16pm — mcadambi

The Arterial Sankey Road, from Cauvery Theatre Junction to Yeshwantpur Circle Junction is going to be widened and going to lose all the green cover it has. It is going to become a major disaster given that Sankey Tank and surrounding regions cannot withstand such a large amount of vehicular pollution.

All those trees on Chowdiah Road which is close to Indian Institute of Science are going to go the way of Seshadri Road.

This is just a disaster waiting to happen to Malleswaram, Sadashivanagar and IISc. One of the oldest areas in the city is being murdered in broad daylight. Instead of concentrating on proper signals and road dividers on Sankey Road and Sir C V Raman road, it is going to be destroyed like Race Course Road was.

"On condition of anonymity, a BBMP Executive Engineer of the Road Widening Committee, said, “The entire stretch of road from the Cauvery Theatre Junction till the Yeswanthpur will be widened as part of 91 arterial roads expansion project. The Road Widening Committee has already placed the plan, as this road is the crucial connecting road to NH 4 (National Highway). Based on the priority, the road will be demarcated and widened as scheduled”.

http://www.deccanherald.c...

Comments

This is ridiculous.

rs - 22 Jan 2009 - 10:16am

This stretch of road is never really so busy and it makes absolutely no sense. I hope that there is enough protest to prevent any such insanity. The link gave has too little detail to be able to say what exactly they have in mind. In a sense all they need to do is manage traffic better - I think that is true in general for all of Bangalore. There is absolutely no need to cut trees.

Same from me

Vasanth - 22 Jan 2009 - 12:19pm

RS, same from me - it is just ridiculous. I believe BBMP's ultimate aim is to remove the greenery of Bangalore and make it concrete jungle like Noida. PIL needs to be raised on this.

Wrong route

idontspam - 22 Jan 2009 - 12:44pm

It must be noted Yeswantpur will soon be connected by metro so people should use that, but until then, there already is a six lane road from cauvery jn to NH4 tumkur road!!!!! People wanting to reach NH4 from cauvery jn need to go straight on bellary road to Hebbal flyover and take ring road to reach NH4. Sign boards need to indicate the same on the streets.

It must be emphasised that alternate routes and mass transport options need to be considered. I have already suggested tram-train option for these areas in my other blog here

Somebody should tame these 'engineers'

Arun - 22 Jan 2009 - 2:53pm

Ignorant, adamant and arrogant ‘engineers’ of BBMP. These guys will never learn. It seems they are targetting most of the roads with good large trees. Also the Tree 'Cutting' Officer's role should be questioned here as he is merely allowing the trees of Bangalore vanish.

I will take this up with MSI and SWA

mcadambi - 22 Jan 2009 - 2:58pm

I will take up this issue with both Malleswaram Swabhimana Initiative and Sankey Park Walkers Association. I have written to the Deputy Public Relations Officer, BBMP and Chief Engineer of BBMP that such a project as above is largely irrelevant.

Hopefully, with adequate citizen participation this project should be scrapped like the Gandhi bazaar underpass that was suggested sometime back.

After the loss of Race Course Road and Seshadri Road, citizens should no longer keep quite!

Tree cutting officer

idontspam - 22 Jan 2009 - 3:32pm

You cant blame him he is the tree cutting officer after all not the tree saving officer. :)

Crazy...

Ravi_D - 22 Jan 2009 - 4:44pm

ASJ / SB / TS and others have already shown how traffic can be streamlined by augmenting existing infrastructure. Does BBMP know (or for that matter care to know) what would the benefit be in the end?

Ravi

Do they want to know

asj - 22 Jan 2009 - 10:44pm

Ravi, the question is - do they want to know?

ASJ

www.driving-india.blogspot.com

Tree-cutting v/s Urban Ecology

Transmogrifier - 22 Jan 2009 - 11:23pm

Mcadambi and others,

My first reaction was just to wring my hands in despair...but that's not what this group is about! MC, Thanks for taking the initiative with the RWA(s) and other citizen awareness groups. Hopefully this too will go the Gandhi bazaar underpass way.

IDS has a good point... what BBMP needs is not a 'tree-cutting' officer but an adequately trained Urban Forester (wonder what the present tree-cutting officer's credentials are). A trained urban ecologist would also be better at managing BBMP's parks too.

http://en.wikipedia.org/w...

transmogrifier

Timber mafia at work

mcadambi - 23 Jan 2009 - 11:40am

My relative who lived in Coorg observed that a combination of the Timber Mafia + Contractor Mafia + Consultant Mafia + Corrupt officials in BBMP / BDA have come together to chop down all these trees in Race Course Road and Seshadri Road and have put their sights on other roads in Bangalore.

Yellapa Reddy, for all his good intentions is powerless with this mafia. Unless civil society acts we will not even be left with Lal Bagh.

I read that the Metro is planning to acquire some portion of Lal Bagh - that is plainly illegal. It is against the Parks and Open Spaces Act.

Absolutely no accountability in BBMP

mcadambi - 23 Jan 2009 - 11:47am

The BBMP has become a mafia of corrupt officials with no accountability whatsoever. Since November 2006 when the council was dissolved to accomodated the enlarged BBMP, till now, there has been no council election and hence nil accountability.

Contrast this with Chennai - which has an elected council in place and is far more effective in local urban governance.

tree v/s traffic

srinathbava - 27 Jan 2009 - 6:08pm

What a shame it has become.BBMP which is supposed to build bangalore, has become an agency of destruction. Chopping of trees and making the road wider a bit, will not at all, i repeat, will not at all, solve the traffic problem. Given the density of vechiles at present, adding few feets of road doesn't make any sense. No matter how big the road you make, unless there is sense of driving, discipline, caring, and most importantly fear of being punished, things of this type certainly will not help, and infact will make the situation more worse. If at all the govt officials are concerned about traffic, then they should first improve the PUBIC TRANSPORT, SYNCRONIZE the traffic signal lights, have STRICT vigilance on the way of driving .Then BBMP, you no longer need a useless and heartless tree-cutting officer,and can have urban ecologist. My only request is this,,,, if you don't want to address the real traffic problems, atleast please spare the trees. Inspite of all these hard talks and giving viable and pratical solution to solving the traffic, the BBMP still wants to go for these unethical posts and pratices, i'm ready for joining any kind of dharna. Please do include me.

Temperature is going to hit 38 degrees this Summer!!

Vasanth - 1 Feb 2009 - 1:50pm

Thanks to BBMP and its road widening work, this summer the temperature is going to hit 38 degrees says the Meteorologists due to trees cutting.

http://bangalorebuzz.blogspot.com/2009/01/bengaluru-to-swelter-under-heat.html

Metro is inevitable, why is the senseless tree cutting for road widening???

We should raise voice against BBMP

ragsks - 2 Mar 2010 - 1:43pm

Hi, A few months back the same kind of illogical tree-cutting-spree was on the WOC road for Metro work. They started bringing down all the trees on either sides of the service road, besides taking down the huge oldest trees on the main-road. I got hold of the BBMP Rangr-officers, area range-office, and the chief engineer's mobile numbers and kept on making calls everyday requesting them not to cut the 4 trees in the service road, close to my appartment. Finally they agreed and only pruned the branches.

During this process i also got to know very vaguely that these trees are put on auction. some kind of bidding happens on these trees , once they are marked for elimination. This was very disturbing to me. Its not the actual BBMP folks who may bring down these trees everywhere. Anyways my point here is it is still possible to get a favourable response provided all of us raise our voices against BBMP for not to cut trees on the Sankey road.

I am pasting here some numbers of the BBMP officers which I had. We can figure out the responsible area engineer by calling these people. Please make the calls. More the calls we make, pressure is more on them.

Thanks

-Rags

Aranya Bhavan , Bangalore APCCF Vigilance officer: 9980936471

9448919388 (BBMP ) : Mr hoobat

ct gowda : 9902069253 (range forest officer bbmp)

venkateshappa (bbmp tree officres) 9980059999 , Reference given by Mr hoobat

9448658841 ramchandra RFO (Range forest officer), reference given by Venkateshappa

9449874477 (babu-shastry) BBMP site engineer (WoC road division) ,reference given by FRP ramachandra

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