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Bangalore Elevated Tollway

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Traffic

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**)

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.

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Vijay's picture

When is this slated to

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When is this slated to complete?

There must be many more bottlenecks on NH7 in Namma Bengalooru... 

tsubba's picture

2nd or 3rd quarter '08 i

ಮೇಲೆ
164 users have liked.
2nd or 3rd quarter '08 i believe. yeah, but this is touted to muri the moogu of the mother of all congestions...
Vijay's picture

Move the congestion to Hosur

ಮೇಲೆ
147 users have liked.

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...

tsubba's picture

Addendum to BET

ಮೇಲೆ
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I think the PPP models need a relook and should mean more than a simple extension of the contract system of old days. (For example, the contractor decided what the specs for the road would be, not the BDA, until the court intervened.) Take BETL for example, if you consider issues mentioned here and the tussle it had with BMIC, it is not clear that anybody was presenting the case from city's perspective. Both BMIC & BETL locked horns over who has to change plans, and insisted on doing what was best for their projects. But it is not automatic that what is good for these projects is good for the city. Nobody seems to have made the case that these roads should really have been connected. And connecting the two roads would mean a significant impact for the city. The theme repeats in Mono-Metro, and to some extent in case of BIAL, not to mention other projects like those townships in the middle of the city, and things like grade-separtors.
shas3n's picture

Some points on BETL

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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

shas3n's picture

Format

ಮೇಲೆ
158 users have liked.
Sorry for the screwed up format above. Some copy-paste made it that way. :(

-Shastri

tsubba's picture

Some clarifications

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Sorry about the confusion. To answer your question, yes it is connected to Phase2. Here is a description: tollway(T/W) highway(H/W) 1. T/W From Silkboard towards attibele exit via ramp R1 and merge into the highway. 2. T/W From Silkboard to Phase1 exit via R2. 3. T/W From Silkboard to Phase2 exit via R3. 4. From Phase1 to Silkboard T/W enter via R5. 5. From Phase2 to Silkboard T/W enter via R6A exit via R6B and enter via R7 and merge with T/W to North 6. From Attibele to Silkboard T/W enter via R7. 7. From Attibele to Phase1 exit via E1 8. From Attibele to Phase2 exit via R4A and R4B. 9. H/W from Silkboard to Phase2 exit via E2 10. From Phase2 to Attibele H/W exit via E3 11. From Phase1 to Silkboard H/W exit via E4 Unknown/Unclear 1. From Silkboard on H/W to Phase1 2. From Phase1 to Attibele? 3. From Phase1 to Phase2 The BMIC interchange is about 1 km to the North of EC. Since BMIC ends at the highway it is a “T junction" and needs only half a clover to provide linkages to the highway. At the point of BMIC interchange tollway road passes over it and is about 56 feet high. So BMIC traffic to Phase1 cannot use BETLs ramps and must cut through the traffic on the highway. BMIC traffic to phase2 can take the exit E2 on the highway. On the way back, traffic from phase2 to BMIC must cross the highway traffic.
tsubba's picture

VR

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The idea for BETL was flouted when there was uncertainty over Metro in Bangalore. Your analysis that congestion cannot be decreased through expansion of the road alone is validated by the experiences of cities world over. Infact, there were reports of union minister of state for highways, Muniyappa also sounding similar ideas.

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