BENGALURU: With companies on the Outer Ring Road (ORR) set to return to their full staff strength from April 1, the death of a 47-year-old biker on the road has unleashed a torrent of anger and sparked debate both online and offline regarding the traffic on the narrow road.
Metro construction work is eating into a major chunk of the road resulting in slim spaces for buses and other vehicles. There seems to be a huge demand to do away with the separate bus priority and cycle lanes to free more spaces for vehicles.
V Manjula, Commissoner of Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT), which planned the road here, told TNIE, “We have a meeting on March 29 with BBMP, BMRCL and Traffic Police in this connection.”
Rajan Gowda, who runs his own computer business on the service road along this stretch, stridently argues why nothing could be done to prevent traffic-related deaths.
“I saw a mother and her child fall down and die in front of my eyes here. And again, this morning I heard that another person has died. Why are the cops not stopping bikers from entering the bus lanes?” he asked. A senior cop managing the traffic called the fibre barricades “killer barricades” and demanded its removal from the bus lane and allow all vehicles to use it.
A senior BBMP official said, “Suitable arrangements and precautions on the main road is now Metro’s responsibility”. The city’s first bicycle mayor, Satya Shankaran, said, “This crisis that has cropped up on this road must be used by other vehicle owners as an opportunity to switch over to public transport or they will never change.”