Bangalore - known as the ’’Garden city’’, ’’Silicon valley of India’’, and so many other flowery names.....I think it would be fair enough if we give it another nasty name regarding its traffic. I’ve lived in Bangalore ever since my birth and therfore I know Bangalore really well, especially the bad parts of traffic. There are so many points to put forth, but here are some of them.
Beginning with some good news, from the past two to three years, almost all the traffic signals have been computerised, with time display indicating the time of wait. Hold on, I’m not complaining that they are not working, but there is a problem with the attitude of the people. It is well known even to a KG-studying kid that green stands for go. Yet, the traffic starts moving about ten seconds before the green light takes over. Since it is a mass movement, no one can be pin-pointed and blamed, but it is just a thing to sigh about. In some of the chief areas, where small roads are crowded with a crazy number of heavy duty vehicles, these lights are invariable swiched off, and manual traffic controlling takes over, which invariably goes out of control. In fact, there is a junction near Sagar Apollo hospital, where the situation was really pathetic - a huge traffic jam and to add to it, no traffic police help. Civilians were controlling the traffic, and trust me when I say that they managed to do it really well !!
Traffic policemen also sometimes contribute to the traffic mess. I think there should be some logic in posting a traffic police constable to a high-traffic area, considering his experience, efficiency and so on. I have seen a rookie controlling heavy traffic in the 100 feet ring road, well infact he totally messed it up. And after half an hour, one found him in a paan stall, smoking away to glory.
Though the saviour of many in dire circumstances, autorickshaws have contributed to much of the slow-moving traffic in Bangalore. I dont know the number of autos on road in Bangalore, but I can assure you that it is a six-digit number. Most of the auto drivers use LPG as fuel in their autos. Now whether that is safe or not is another big debate, but what I’ve observed is that using LPG as a fuel decreases the pulling power of the autos (though I’m not too sure of it. Please comment on the same if you have anything to say). To add insult to injury, some of the auto drivers do not have the driving sense that one has to move on the left side of the road. Signal jumping, not following lane discipline are very common.
Another factor is responsible for the traffic - the development of the city. It may sound strange to you when I say this, but when I say development, I mean re-asphaulting of the roads, maintenance work, and construction of the never-ending flyovers connecting different hotspots of the city. Construction of flyovers is expected to ease traffic, but in that process it is hampering the traffic badly. I can give an example in the havoc that was caused near Hosur road from the past two years, though I dont know about the present situation there. Also, I found that not all flyovers were really needed. For example, the flyover near The National college Basavanagudi has just messed up the road and troubled the residents there.
There is one more irritating thing - one way roads. Some of the busy roads are converted to one-way traffic roads overnight without the notice of any. So the traffic is given a detour, into some small stuffy roads, leading to traffic congestion. Unfortunately in Bangalore many of the busy roads are small roads. In some of these busy small roads, traffic parking is allowed on both sides of the road, and heavy duty vehicles are not prohibited. Now lorries, autos, cars, bikes all gushing through a 50 feet road.......I think you can imagine the rest.
Well thats all that I can think for now. Of course there are other factors like schools, exceeding number of two-wheelers in the city, indisciplined vehicle parking, inefficient traffic policemen, foolhardy drivers which add to the mess. Let me end the note with this - ’’Bangalore is cool, But Bangalore traffic.....ugh !!!’’.