"Signal free" Hosur Road: opportunity or nightmare?

Just caught this in the news; BBMP's plans to convert Hosur road to a Bellary road like "signal free" stretch (read more here).

This is another series of traffic engineering nightmares just waiting to happen (narrow underpasses, plain bad design, non-existent pedestrian infrastructure). Ironically, they actually have cited Bellary Road as the model to emulate. There must be some way to get in on this and at least attempt to get things done more holistically. RTI the design plans? Another meet with BBMP? Two things that I could immediately think of:

• Given BMTC's "Kendriya Sarige" plan, isn't there some way we can get the BMTC and BBMP to work together on this one and create a (curbside?) bus lane. If it works, we'll have a bus lane from Vellara junction to CSB. It's ambitious I know, but it's worth a shot.
• Integrate creation of pedestrian infrastructure in all plans (pedestrian subways, broader pavements, guard rails)

Thoughts? Ideas?

transmogrifier

BBMP has grand plans for the city

The transport minister has come out with a mega proposal for Bangalore.  

http://www.deccanherald.com/content/23637/mega-revamp-plan-city.html

Some highlights - 

"With a massive financial outlay of Rs 22,000 crore, the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) plans to drastically change the face of the City’s roads, drains and lakes in three years."

"To make 12 key corridors signal-free, the plan is to equip over 100 junctions with grade separators. The total road length covered under this project will be 122 km, a network connecting the Central Business District (CBD) with Outer Ring Road and Radial Roads."

"Another important proposal is the construction of three elevated corridors, in the City’s north, south and east to decongest traffic. The south corridor will run from Vellara junction to Silk Board, the north corridor from Minsk Square to Hebbal flyover and the east corridor from Vellara junction to Kundanahalli junction."

Some questions and I think we should try and meet Ashwin Mahesh as soon as possible

a.  Are they planning to demolish the current magic boxes between Hebbal and High Grounds to construct the elevated corridor?

b.  The south elevated corridor and the east elevated corridor both end at Vellara junction.  How are the roads leading out of this junction - Richmond Road towards Richmond Circle and Brigade Road/Museum Road going to handle this flood of vehicles?  

c. Do roads also include sidewalks as part of them?

d. Does this interfere with Phase 2 of the Metro which supposedly will connect Yelahanka with E-City.  Where will the viaducts for the Metro come up?

e. Given BBMP's track record of finishing grade separators, what is the execution plan that will enable this to be finished in 3 years.  For the record - the 15th Cross underpass that was to have been completed in March 2009 is still not finished and this is on the ORR.

Srivathsa

 

 

 

Elevated Corridors - green light

Source Deccan Herald, CM Gets Cracking on City's Woes: "Yeddyurappa showed the green signal to BBMP to take up two elevated corridor projects: the 16-km North-South corridor connecting Hebbal to Madivala through Minsk Square and Vellara junction and the 12-km Bangalore East corridor connecting Kodihalli and Kundalahalli through Vellara junction..."

More on DH: Elevated corridor projects to ease traffic : "... The project has been conceived in the wake increasing traffic density in North due to International Airport at Devanahalli ... detail project report is yet to be prepared to identify location of loops along the corridor. ... Palike has found the project is the only way to provide signal-free movement of traffic between South and North. As the road will be built over existing roads the project does not require land except around Vellara Junction. The road covers Sankey Road, Bellary Road up to Hebbal ... Swiss Challenge method ... IDEB has taken up the challenge. ... already submitted technical proposal, which is being studied by the Palike... project is expected to begin in 2009 September... Yeddyurappa said the proposed project solves major traffic problems of the city."

From The Hindu: Focus on Infrastructure Development : "Yeddyurappa on Tuesday announced the construction of two high speed corridors — Hebbal to Madiwala (16 km) and Kodihalli to Kundalahalli (12 km) — to enable fast motor traffic movement in Bangalore. ... apart from the two ... corridors a section of the outer ring road, Central Silk Board Junction to Bellary Road Intersection, would be made traffic signal-free ..."

Find the bigger picture, covering all currently porposed elevated roads of Bangalore here - Bangalore Elevated Roads.

Elevated Inner Core Ring Road - whats up?

Remember the Inner Core Ring Road (ICRR) project? Find some documents here in case you need to jog your memory. BBMP and newspapers haven't talked much about it lately, and then The Hindu carried this piece (steel structures favoured for ring road) a few days ago.

There was one thing that struck me as odd in that news peice. Chief Engineer (Infrastructure) of the Bangalore Mahanagara Palike is advocating use of steel structures to build the expressway and is also dreaming up a 3 level road:

"it could have three levels for vehicles to travel — the existing ground level, one for two-wheelers and another for four-wheelers, he said."

But then, two execution models are suggested:

"The project could be proposed under Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission or be given out to private companies on a Build Own Operate Transfer basis."

BBMP's engineers are clearly thinking design, that probably tells us we shouldn't assume that ICRR will be developed on a BOOT basis. Is BBMP thinking of doing the project itself?

Please. No! BBMP, you have zero experience building and managing such roads. Don't think of doing it yourself.

KR Circle to be Signal free

Read this in today's paper.

http://www.hindu.com/2009/03/30/stories/2009033059820400.htm

"Bangalore: Bangalore will soon have its widest magic box underpass for vehicular movement at K.R. Circle.

The underpass, to be built across the road leading into Cubbon Park at K.R. Circle, will have a width of seven metres. It will connect Ambedkar Veedhi with Nrupatunga Road and make the junction signal-free."

Anyone knows anything more about this grand plan?  This is called kicking the can down the road.  All the traffic piles up on Nrupathunga Road (near the signal at Hudson Church).  Or do they plan another magic box so that this traffic keeps flowing?  Imagine Cubbon park; it will become impossible to walk inside as traffic will flow non-stop.  And it's not that all this will make car drivers more patient.  They take uninterrupted travel as a birthright and BBMP panders to them. 

Well managed signals can lead to smoother traffic flow.  The problem with our traffic lights is that people don't wait in lines and in the correct lanes and hence traffic jams occur at the signals itself.   This small fact seems lost on BBMP and its engineers.  Any such structural intervention should follow detailed analysis.

How are pedestrians going to cross?  There are colleges and plenty of government offices there.  I plan to write to the ACP Traffic police and let's see how he responds.

Srivathsa

More signal free madness

More signal free madness from BBMP.  And this is going to cost Rs.2500 crores.  Saw this in bangalorebuzz.blogspot.com but could not source the newspaper.

http://bangalorebuzz.blogspot.com/

"Commuters who have to put up with tiresome waiting at traffic signals in the city, could be in for some relief.
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) hopes to make 12 major corridors, including Cubbon Road and Rajkumar Road, signal-free for improved traffic flow in the city.
The initiative, which is likely to cost it Rs 2,500 crore, could help save vehicles travel time and fuel, and reduce noise and air pollution."
 

"The 12 corridors which will be made signal-free are the Dr Rajkumar Road from Yeshwanthpur Junction to Okalipuram (5 km), Chord Road, from Mysore Road Junction to CV Raman Road (10.5 km), Magadi Road, from Chord Road to Outer Ring Road (3.5 km), from Mysore Road Junction to Central Silk Board Junction (14.5 km), Central Silk Board Junction to Vellara Junction ( 6 km), Bannerghatta Road, from IIM-B to Wilson Garden (9.5 km), Vellara Junction to Whitefield via Varthur and HAL (13.5 km), Agara lake to Sirsi Circle via Lalbagh Fort Road (8.5 kms), City centre to Kengeri via Sirsi Circle (15.5 km), Yeshwanthpur industrial area to Hebbal, between NH 4 to NH 7 (6.5 km), Mekhri Circle to Benniganahalli via Jayamahal Road (12.5 km) and Cubbon Road to ORR via Kamaraj Road, Buddhavihar Road and Hennur Road (7 km)."
 

a. What e.g. happens at Vellara junction?  what happens at Kamaraj Road/MG Road jn?  All the traffic will pile up there as it happens today at Nrupathunga Road/KG Road jn.

b. Mysore Road to Silkboard - we are still stuck with incomplete underpasses at JP Nagar and Kadirenahalli. 

c. Where does this leave the pedestrian?  I have seen the plight of pedestrians trying to cross Bellary Road near HQ Command and just before Mekhri Circle. 

As usual BBMP views our city as a network of roads and a thoroughfare with little regard for aesthetics.  Just look at the Basaveshwara Circle or KR Circle today.  

Srivathsa

 

Mysore road expansion - how can you remove the bottleneck?

Do planners in Bangalore realize that bottlenecks are the main source of traffic problems? It doesn't matter if you have a 5km long 8 lane road at the end of which has a bottleneck which reduces to 2 lanes. 

It looks like that the Mysore road is going to be widened. The govt will end up spending crores of money and cause inconvenience to lot of riders during this widening spree. We'll also lose all the trees which so far have kept the Mysore road a complete canopy. But the Bapujinagar bridge is a huge bottleneck. If nothing is done to widen at this point, the whole effort is meaningless. Given that we have the Masjid and the GhaaLi Anjaneya temple on either side, we can imagine that this part of the road can never be widened. 

Do the officials even think about this before going about doing their job of road widening? 

Namma Raste - road use efficiency

Read in an email this morning that on 19th July 2008, a workshop on “Reclaiming Bangalore’s roads: Namma Raste” was jointly organized by Environment Support Group (ESG), CIVIC Bangalore and Alternative Law Forum at Vidyadeep, Ulsoor Road, Bangalore.

The context for this meeting was the PIL against BBMP over widening of 91 roads. Apparently, the claim is that the widening projects will increase average vehicle speeds from 8-10 km/hr to 40 km/hr (ref: material from ESG/HU - these should soon be up on ESG website, so I will save myself copy paste jobs here).

The workshop had over 90 participants, ranging from representatives of traders’ associations, resident association federations, and organizations working with the differently abled & for the urban poor, groups working on pedestrian rights, architects, schools, colleges and members of Hasiru Usiru.

I know there is a set of people who consider extreme environmental activism as anti-development. Put those biases aside for just a moment, and think about road widening efforts or flyovers that have come up in your area. Then, if you commute more than 5-6 km, tell us if your commute time has improved. Think and tell if there is enough proof that these projects help. Save for just a few flyovers, they don't!

I can give you an example from my area. My wife takes 45 mins today to do 9 km from Whitefield to IRR/Domlur area. It used to take asbout the same time (50 mins) to do Whitefield to Langford town two years ago. What has happened over last two years? Well, let me list them all

• Airport is gone, and hence a lot of vehicles.
• There is a new 6 lane railway overbridge at Marathahalli
• Marathahalli market area road has now been 'widened'.
• Airport road itself saw some limited 'widening'
• The road from Kundalahalli to Marathahalli too has been 'widened'

Despite all this, the speeds have reduced, ~ 20 kmph, to 10 kmph in this example. When you discuss this with self proclaimed urban development experts, the reason given is - there are more people and vehicles now.

Okay, alright. But isn't that the problem we should be attacking here!? More you build, more they come - that just can't be the excuse for misguided investments with undefined RoI (return on investment). The effort has to be to reduce usage of private vehicles for office commute. Investments have to be go towards managing whatever road resources we have. Past all that, we can look at adding more road area.

Lets put a number to the efficiency with which we use our road resources (I will post a whole lot of pictures to prove this point). Remember our talk of entropy, turbulence and all that? Every 200 meters, you either have

• encroached or missing pavement, leading to pedestrians on the road
• car parked on the arterial road (tons at Marathahalli)
• Some construction happening, with construction material spilling on to the road
• Bikers riding wrong side, autos criss crossing, blah blah blah - you know all this too well.

I would say that Bangalore's road use efficiency is probably about 40%. What I mean to say is that if the traffic and road space was managed to perfection, we can handle the same number of vehicles with 40% of road space.

Now, do widened roads add to this efficiency? 5% increase in road area gives you 2% increase in capacity to handle vehicles. That 2% increase in capacity to handle vehicles can come from efforts to increase road use efficiency itself. The question of course is -

1. How I arrived at these numbers, plus
2. would it cost less to increase road use efficiency.

Lets collaborate on a paper right here to arrive at rough numbers on road use efficiency. But I am willing to bet that #2 is true. Its not just that it will cost less to invest in increasing road use efficiency, but, this approach has better guarantee of success than investing in widening more roads and building more meaningless flyovers.

I have not rested my case yet. I need help to build that road use efficiency number :)

 

Rethinking road-widening - Tunnels?

One of the core infrastructural issues we are facing is an inability of our arterial roads and highways to provide rapid cross-town access. Globally, city and highway planners recognize and create different infrastructure for highways and city roads. See Dr. Joglekar’s posts here for a succinct description of this problem plaguing most Indian cities. A simple schematic (full size image here)and an inventory of city highways reveals the problem.

Thru Highways:

1. NH7 (in blue)
2. NH4 (in red)

Terminal Highways:

1. NH-209 (in yellow)
2. SH-17 (in green)

While the ORR and the planned PRR attempt to relieve through-traffic, these highways ironically remain some of the fastest cross-town routes. Recognizing this, infrastructural planners have expanded/widened roads leading into the city where land was available and have built (BETL, Mysore Rd flyover), are building (Nelamangala expressway) or planning to build (Balabrooie-Hebbal) long flyovers to ‘jump’ the bottlenecks. As we all know though, these just move the bottlenecks. And so, the ever-unpopular (and time-consuming) appropriation of massive amounts of land and road-widening is being touted as the panacea. There might be another way though.

An alternative

One option might involve reconnecting NH-4 and NH-7 using a belowground access-controlled (NOT signal-free) highway that cuts through the city and ensuring that NH-209 and SH-17 don’t ‘dump’ traffic in the middle of the city (full size image here).

Specifically:

1. Travelling south, NH-7 would move completely off the existing Bellary Rd after the Mekhri circle underpass moving onto Palace ground property (that might be available). At Cauvery theatre, it would join an emerging NH-4 and then ‘dive’ underground just before Palace Road ‘emerging’ near (or after) the Military school on Hosur Road.
2. Traveling east, NH-4 would go underground near the IISc Gymkhana ground (potentially before the MS Ramaiah Rd intersection). It would emerge near Cauvery theatre (on Bellary Rd) and join NH-7. After ‘re-submerging’ near Palace Rd, it would travel along with NH-7 branching off (belowground) to emerge near the Bhaskaran Rd/Kensington Rd intersection
3. Traveling north, SH-17 would go belowground at the foot of the Sirsi Circle flyover  and join NH-4/NH-7 underground.
4. NH-209 would terminate at ORR leaving users the option of using SH-17 or NH-7 for a cross-town commute.

The project would function best if expressway design standards are consistently adhered to. All project roads should maintain a constant width (preferably 4 lanes + 2 emergency lanes) widening to 6 lanes only in sections where highways combine (e.g. NH-4 and NH-7). A limited number of surface exits could enable rapid access to different points in the city (K.G. Road, Kanteerava stadium, Millers Road/Vidhana Souda, HSRL terminal/M.G. Rd, Kamaraj Rd, Richmond Rd etc). Further appropriately designed interchanges (dark brown squares in pic) would be required to connect highways underground.

Pros, cons and disclaimers:

• Cost: Similar projects across the world have cost anything from Rs 280 crore (for Sydney’s 2-lane Cross City tunnel to a staggering 66,000 crore (for Boston’s 10-lane Big Dig. However, BBMP’s existing road-widening plan on 6 corridors already calls for an investment of 597 crores.
• Time: Similar projects have taken anything from 2 years (Cross City tunnel) to 22 years (Boston’s Big Dig)
• With adequate planning, inconvenience to road users can be minimized with tunneling work starting in areas where no current roads exist (e.g.  Palace Grounds, Ulsoor Lake, SJ Park) emerging onto the surface nearer the completion date. After cross-town connections are complete, exits to surface streets (e.g. K.G. Rd, M.G. Rd) can be added on.
• Other arterial corridors can (in some cases) be redesigned to filter onto ‘reconnected’ highways. For example, Old-Airport Road can be connected to NH-4 using Suranjan Das Road.
• This project would not address existing bottlenecks outside the project area (e.g., the Bennigannahalli bottleneck on Old Madras Rd). However, using a consistent road-width 4 (travel) +2 (emergency) lanes and strict access-control throughout would make the highways effective travel corridors.
• The project does not address surface streets or public transportation. However by reducing current traffic loads on surface streets, roads can be engineered to maintain a consistent (4-6 lane) width, turning refuges and better pedestrian infrastructure. Existing one-ways can be reverted to two-way traffic or provide contra-flow bus lanes.

These ideas are not new to city planners as cities the world over have demonstrated the use of this technology. Will it work for us?

(Image courtesy: Wikipedia)

transmog

Signal Free Corridor projects - need scrutiny (updated)

Vinay S, an active member at Hasiru Usiru has obtained detailed information from BBMP on upcoming signal free corridor projects. Many people think that the project(s) need some serious scrutiny for the returns they promise on investments. Its one thing to make a relatively new road like Outer ring road into a signal free corridor, and another to talk about turning more than half dozen radial roads signal free without a clear plan for each and every interesction that lies on the way, or more important, without commensurate or alternate investments on public transport (like priority lanes for Big10 routes). Many feel that without such clarity, these corridor projects may end up being "bottleneck shifting" or "more parking space for free" projects.

Vinay has promised to mail over all documents he has obtained (will upload them here as soon as I get hold of them). We may need to scan and upload some sketches as well.

BTW, use google/yahoo map and check out San Francisco, supposedly an official "sister-city" of Bangalore. Take a look and tell us all how many signal free corridors you find criss-crossing that city . Not many, and not even to zip through the heart of this city in a very car friendly state.

Attachment	Size
Signal Free DPR - Old Airport Road.pdf	549.98 KB
Signal Free DPR - Magadi Road.pdf	324.21 KB
Signal Free DPR - Mys Road to CSB.pdf	514.91 KB
Signal Free DPR - Rajkumar Road.pdf	459.2 KB
Signal Free DPR - Bannerghatta Road.pdf	392.89 KB
Signal Free DPR - Mekhari Circle to Hope Farm.pdf	645.39 KB