HYDERABAD: With Metro works in Cyber Towers, flyover works at Biodiversity, IKEA and Malaysian Township, road widening at Nallagandla and Lingampally -- besides the attempts to clear the perennial bottlenecks at IIIT and Kothaguda -- the West Zone of the city is seeing multiple developmental works in various segments, all at the same time.
Though all these developments are expected to improve the traffic flow some time in future, at present the time the commuters spend in transit has almost doubled from what they used to do in the recent times. As more and more minutes get added to the travel time, the commuters, most of them techies, who travel on these routes are finding new ways to kill the time during their daily journeys.
“I end up listening to my favourite podcasts as I drive my way to work in Lingampally,” says 35-year-old Uma, who undertakes an excruciatingly long journey from Bowenpally to Lingampally for work.
As public transport, both MMTS and buses, is not the most convenient option for her, she has no option but to brave the traffic. For people staying within the traffic-choked Cyberabad, it is a similar struggle.
“I stay about four to five kms away (from office), which would take about 45 minutes on a busy week day. I simply log in and start working from the cab. That’s the only way to save time because even if I take public transport, there are practically no footpaths or shaded roads to walk up to the office,” said Pratigya Baskota, an employee of Deloitte.
Some others are using up the time they spare dodging traffic devising ways to counter the traffic bottlenecks.“We thought our (IT) solutions get sold in millions, so why not device something useful to us. We used some graph theory to solve the traffic issue around the Cyber Tower-Cyber Gateway area. We figured out that if the traffic moves around in a loop by removing the traffic signal at Hitech City, then we can easily avoid the traffic pile up that happens due to short duration of the green signal,” said Alok Tiwari, a senior employee of Oracle. “All it took was about an hour.”
A small but steady number are also resorting to catch up on their favourtie series.“I usually take cab from Masjid Banda to Financial district, at the IIIT junction takes 15 minutes to clear up, so I catch up on my series,” said Abhishek Kumar, another techie.
Developmental works slow down commuters
Including metro works in Cyber Towers, flyover works at Biodiversity, IKEA and Malaysian Township, road widening at Nallagandla and Lingampally, etc. simultaneous works are being held across the city. Though all these developments are expected to improve the traffic flow some time in future, the time the commuters spend in transit has almost doubled from before