Road engg at ORR/OMR junction at KR Puram

By the way, I can helpup in sketchup drawing

Thanks, I lost all my drawings in a hard disk crash. I didnt have the guts to start over. If you are in Bangalore we should meet up along with Suhas.

Suhas do PM your number if you are around.

Is this something you can clean up ? If not,  I am thinking of getting someone  help on pictures, but that will take a few months

Adding more details is definitely possible. The quality of images will unfortunately be the same but I will try to supplement with text (most of it from this thread), it will become quite verbose. Let me give it a shot before you reach out. The solution will still need some explaining face to face. 

 The remaining issues should be taken care off with the other short/medium term plans discussed..

You are right, Most private transport issues will be solved by the short term plan. 

However, the ORR will become an artery for all Airport to IT corridor traffic. There will need to be mass transit corridors on this as well. Currently it is called a BRTS lane in plans. So if you ran a High Occupancy surface light rail on the ORR median all along the ORR from Hebbal to Silkboard/EC, the tunnel will be well worth it in the long run. The tunnel could have an u/g light rail station near where it crosses the KR Puram station, so it can integrate with not only the station but also the bus stand on the surface (built in the short term plan) carrying ITPL passengers from the Byappanahalli metro/bus interchange. This light rail will connect the High speed rail/metro at Hebbal to KRPuram, Marathalli, Silkboard & Electronic city along the ORR.

 was wondering if we ever will have money to build tunnels!

I am sure we will find a way. Everyone else with our size has :) Otherwise we should be ashamed.

6 lane 6 km tunnel road under the Yangtse river in China

The 6km, 6 lane Södra Länken tunnel road in Stockholm

Click here for a draft of the analysis. Please provide your inputs as comments so I can collate and revise the ppt.

 I think what Suhas is suggesting makes sense.  We should make a simple requirements document talking about smooth merging of traffic, pedestrian facilities, bus shelters etc. Once the basic requirements are written up, list something like 3 plans with simple figures and very basic details and engage with BDA/BBMP.  Through a give and take process, we can collectively improve the design.  Can also engage with organizations like City Connect w(ho did the MS Ramiah junction study) or CiSTUP to fill in more details as the project evolves.

That may be a better approach than investing a lot of time in nailing down the nitty gritty details here.

yaakO ayDiyessu, ishTond stressu? in poorva janma you must have done some engineering graphics, no? Taap vyu, side vyu anta haeLkoTidralla. use that no?

i work with top view. mostly. it works. my workshorse computer is still in shipping. will get back if you need help.

houdri suhas, nija. but that applies to any group of people including private companies.

but the folks who have put in thought and comeup with sols can now engage from a position of knowledge, no? they now know the problems at this intersection well. know what all needs to be done. and also know atleast one set of solutions to the problem. 

so when they talk to concerned people, they cannot be sold on  haars haeLidd handwavy stock answers.

The extra road is a possible solution for this particular problem. However the backup from the chicken neck is even bigger. I feel landing the ORR here was an intrusion.

Instead of adding "extra" lane/s on the left of OMR (from Benniganahalli), I think the emphasis must be to "shift" a couple of lanes from the right so that the attributes of the road are maintained throughout - ie. from the underbridge all the way past the cable-stayed bridge.

If "additional" lanes are created, a future problem, as identified by IDS above, will be the chicken neck, which will soon become insufficient with pile-ups.

Further, once segregation & conflicts are eliminated with this lane shifting, a barricade would have to be erected to prevent cross overs, & proper pedestrian facilities developed with availability of vacated lanes with an extra-large median or island.

Much more enforcement is primary & a neccessity at the chicken neck to segregate pedestrians & traffic. The traditional Laissez Faire attitude is being overcome by large scale solutions whilst simple enforcement is being ignored everywhere repeatedly - this cannot continue any longer.

However, I still maintain that the best (& correct) solution is as recommended in CTTP, which is to re-align the ORR parallel to the salem rail track, with provision of a clover leaf & ramps for inter-changing between OMR-ORR & vice versa.

 All credits to you...

One thing that needs to be taken care off putting this road is waterproofing..the proposed lane runs very close to the tank bund and adequate water proofing will be needed..!

Have seen that there is lot of melee when the traffic enters from the ORR bridge and merges with the OMR(from benniganahalli)..peds are also affected a lot..the main reasons as I see are as below..

1. Truck trailers parked on the left most lane as the OMR bridge lands..sometimes cops detain these for paper checks

2.OMR traffic trying to get onto the ORR coming from Benniganahalli

3. Bus stops sometimes occupying two lanes of roads

4. Kolar/Chitoor and other busses stopping to pick up passenfers just at the start of the hanging bridge 

Was seeing the satellite pic of this area and found that an additional lane can be carved out for OMR traffic getting to the ORR as below

This should be easy to do..and will regularize the traffic at the junction and address point 1 and 2 above..

Also the bus stops and truck stops needs to be removed and ORR bus stop normalized.   

 is there a need for a sidewalk on the RHS parallel to the cable stayed bridge ?

The lanes will anyway need to be centered to allow for bus bays and proper curving before the chicken neck. This allows space closer to the walls of the bridge which can either be hatched with no use or paved for people to walk to the NH4 bus stand on on the chevron. Both are feasible. From a vehicle perspective sidewalks dont matter. So, think how you can network the 4 bus stands (2 at KRP, 2 at TinF) on this side for people to be able to walk between all of them and also to cross over thru the existing u/p and another u/p closer to tin factory that needs to be tunnelled to cross NH4. 

IDS, SB, and others on the project,

I think whenever we get the opportunity to speak with those concerned (BDA, NHAI, BTP, BTMC) we should sell this as a low-cost, high-impact experiment. Using the word  'experiment'  implies that almost all the improvements can be modified or reversed.

1. Bus bays, lane marking, chevrons are all relatively easy to mark over.  
2. The LHS pavement on both sides of the ORR lanes (that run along the Cable-stayed bridge) could be permanently laid in concrete (2nd pic).
3. The RHS pavement on the other hand (based on IDS' suggestion) can just be painted on the existing road surface(1st pic) although will need substantial protection from street traffic (2nd pic). This would make it amenable to changes as and when required (based on when (and if) Metro Ph-2 makes it here).

I would say that we should  look into the future development plans, deliberate on them and present plans as well. 

IMO, when the cable bridge and the ORR fly overs were being constructed, it would have been very easy to construct the red road that i had shown. It would also have been easy at that point of time to divert the traffic from ORR hebbal side to Kolar via Rama moorthy nagar.

It may even have been possible to design the ORR in such a way that it avoids touching the KR puram railway station. Of course there may have been other cost and planning constraints as to why it ended up as it is today, but in my opinion, there was a lack of long range planning. 

In this re-engineering, we should probably think about the sustainability of the solution 10 years into the future. Given the pace at which public works happen, the utility of the project should not reduce by the time it is  implemented.

Of course, there can be a short term and long term plan with the short term looking at how to efficiently utilize existing bandwidth and infrastructure and the long term looking at a larger time frame.

You have both sort of defined the objective well. Pedestrians are an important aspect to consider not just here but in most of India. When we start looking at peds we will realize we will actually have to reclaim some lanes to provide them the facilities. This is contrary to the well established belief that we need more asphalt space. Where public transport infrastructure like train stations are present, the pedestrian paths need to be developed to take them safely across roads and highways in to other PT modes or to local streets. If you cant do this then there is no point building PT infrastructure

This particular stretch cannot lay claim to be BDA's ORR or NHAI's NH4  or a BBMP's arterial road very clearly. It is a mix of all. One of my suggestion was to keep the NH4 part free from peds thats why I didnt connect PedX1 across the highway. So you still get the NH4 traffic flowing free all the way on Lanes 4, 5&6. Since ORR has landed on to the surface without being tunnelled through or flying over to connect to itself we need to make it flow on surface streets on surface street terms till it can reconnect itself back. The surface street cannot be held hostage to an ORR intrusion since pedestrians and PT is getting compromised.

The larger goal being, the authorities need to establish the process of guiding traffic in the right direction instead of letting the vehicles (&Pedestrians) sort out problems on their own on the streets as is being done now.

Hi Suhas /IDS,

I think we need to bear in mind that Metro phase-2 will most likely include a track extension from Byappanahalli to ITPL via KR Puram. In this case, the (elevated) track is most likely to run adjacent the ORR lanes on the northern side of OMR (in way of the bridge) since it would emanate from Byappanahalli station on the northern side & routing /planning the viaduct will also be simpler if it is carried along the northern side (It may cross over to the southern side only after clearing the bridge).

Also, a Metro station will most certainly be planned adjacent the present KR Puram SWR station.

It might be better to make provision/s for these future developments in any proposals for road plans.

 I saw two concrete structures that have been cast on either side of the Ben bridge.  Was told by some folks that these structures will be "pushed" under the bridge to open two lanes on either side of the bridge.  After diverting traffic to these outlets, apparently, the existing tunnel will be widened.