Flyover plan may add to traffic woes

If problems occur, area near Hebbal flyover may get choked, impact the CBD too

BENGALURU: A new proposal by the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) to ease the city’s notorious traffic bottleneck at Hebbal Flyover could undergo radical changes. A Technical Committee has now been set up with representatives from all departments, which will examine specific suggestions made by the Traffic Police. Chief Secretary T M Vijay Bhaskar chaired a meeting on Tuesday in which officials from Bangalore Metro Rail Corporation Limited, BDA, Traffic Police, Rail Infrastructure Technical and Engineering Services, BBMP, Karnataka Road Development Corporation Limited, and Public Works Department, discussed a detailed presentation to decongest the Hebbal Flyover.

Sources told The New Indian Express that traffic officials feel the project would bring traffic from all directions to the Hebbal Flyover and this, in turn, would spread to the Central Business District. “The Suburban Rail, Metro, public transport and vehicles would all converge here. If some problem occurs, the area would get choked and it would impact the CBD too. Traffic cops feel that it would be better if vehicles (from different areas) take alternate roads to and from the airport, rather than being chiefly dependent on the Hebbal Flyover,” a government official said. 

BDA’s proposal, finalised on January 2, envisages ten lanes from the Hebbal Flyover — five lanes each going from the airport to the city and in the reverse direction — with all of them being signal-free corridors. Three new uni-directional lanes had been proposed to be constructed from Bengaluru City side towards the airport crossing the Hebbal junction, an underpass from the Tumukuru end and a uni-directional flyover from K R Puram at the second level. BDA had earlier proposed two lanes from the airport towards the city, on which work stopped midway. 

Another official said that traffic police had proposed alternate routes to be created by widening roads from areas around Hebbal. “For instance, rather than carrying the traffic from Tumakuru to Hebbal to airport, an elevated road along the GKVK route could help. Again, a wide, straight road from K R Puram to the airport could be explored,” he said.

Vijay Bhaskar told TNIE, “I have asked a Technical Committee headed by Secretary of PWD and including the Additional Commissioner of Police (Traffic) to go into the design, to minimise land acquisition and address issues raised by concerned agencies.”

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