Thursday, 14 May 2015

BAD ROADS IN BANGALORE




There are two types of roads in urban areas; Radial pattern and Gridiron pattern. Urban areas along the coast have Gridiron pattern and those in the interior part of the country have Radial pattern.  Bengaluru has radial pattern of roads with the highways entering the city radially. With concentration of roads, in the central area, potential for commercial uses is created.  Traffic congestion, concentration of commercial activities, and densely populated areas are the effects of the radial pattern of roads.. 

Inner ring road, intermediate ring road, outer ring road and peripheral ring roads are provided to divert the traffic from the central area. Bengaluru has radial pattern of roads with all these patterns mentioned due to concentration of traffic at the centre.

In the Master Planof the city, proposals for improvement of roads network is proposed for comfortable traffic movement and better connectivity to different parts of the city. Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) develops roads according to the Master Plan proposals in the extension schemes developed. Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagar Palike (BBMP) enforces building lines required for widening of the roads. 

Whenever applications are received for sanction of  buildings,  buildings are permitted beyond the building line and surrender  of the depth of site covered by building margin free of cost. With this type of enforcement, the roads get widened ultimately. But this takes too many years to achieve a complete widened road.

Transfer of Development Rights (TDR) was introduced with incentives to avoid heavy expenditure for acquisition of portions of properties required for widening of roads.

The roads are to be maintained well for the convenience of road users. The surface of the roads should be good and formation of pot holes is to be avoided. Road cuttings are to be filled up. Rain water should not be allowed to flood the roads. Pot holes are formed when rain water stagnates in portions of roads without proper slopes, not allowed to reach the road side drains, blocking of drains with debris and garbage, blocking of shoulder drains from road pavement to the drains, etc. 

Bad design of roads not sloping towards the natural valleys, bad design of storm water drain network, etc affect the flow of rain water and  pot holes are formed.The above defects are to be rectified by BBMP. The smaller drains are required at the higher altitudes and bigger drains at the lower altitudes to allow flow of rain water to the natural valleys.

Though the present groups of officials are not involved in the earlier defective road designs, and storm water designs, at least they should maintain the roads well without pot holes and road cuttings. This is not being done. Everywhere pot holes exist, many of them are very deep. The area engineers and the ward corporators are not bothered to get it filled up.


The vehicle movements are affected to slow down at the pot holes, accidents occur when the vehicles in front suddenly move to a side to avoid pot holes; lower parts of the vehicles are damaged, etc. 

In spite of collection of road cutting charges, road cuts are not filled up. Is it a big technical task for filling up pot holes? If at all they fill up the pot holes, will they maintain quality of work to see that the pot holes do not appear again in a few days? Large amounts of funds are wasted for sub-standard quality of work without providing relief, passing bills for more number of pot holes than that existed using  only quarry dust to fill up pot holes, that too not up to the surrounding road surface but covering part of the depth of pot holes, etc. The citizens grievances are well covered by media. 

The result is helpless attitudes of corporators and officials indicating lack of funds. Proper urban governance with sincere engineers is to be organized to see that at least one of the serious problems namely; avoiding pot holes is solved and people have relief for vehicle movement. 

Real Estate Properties are available in Bangalore City…….

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