Ring road has bda going round in circles

The city's ring roads have become synonymous with inordinately long waits and traffic bottlenecks. The BDA's solution is the construction of an elevated Peripheral Ring Road, a long-delayed project. The PRR will have eight lanes and four-lane service roads and accommodate a Metro line to ease traffic congestion.  With tender processes likely to be halted because of the 2019 general election in keeping with the Election Commission's Code of Conduct, assurances that work will start in June ring hollow. Moreover, even this massive project is in keeping with the administration’s band-aid approach of building flyovers, elevated corridors and widening roads instead of bolstering public transport.

While Bengaluru’s roads continue to groan under the burden of increasing traffic,  the wait for the city’s third ring road, - after the Inner and Outer Ring Roads -  the elevated Peripheral Ring Road (PRR), has just got longer. Although the Bangalore Development Authority (BDA) had planned to float tenders in February for the 65- km long PRR, running from Tumakuru Road to Hosur Road junction, a delay in carrying out the necessary survey, has now forced it to postpone this to March.

The government had directed the BDA to ensure that all the documentation and procedures were completed  by February to allow the  tenders to be finalised, but  the authority,  which claims to have been busy carrying out another survey with a couple of private companies, has not completed the process and failed to file the survey report.

Going by the BDA’s proposal, the PRR will be wider than the existing 65-km Outer Ring Road. While the ORR has four lanes and two service lanes on either side, the PRR will have eight lanes and four-lane service roads. It is also planned to accommodate the Metro Rail line on the stretch in future to further ease the city’s traffic congestion.

The PRR  will connect major junctions like Hesaraghatta Road, Doddaballapura Road, Ballari Road, Hennur- Bagalur Road, Hoskote-Anekal Road and Sarjapur Road and help heavy vehicles and traffic heading for other districts and states via Bengaluru, avoid entering the city and make their way directly to their destinations from its outskirts. The idea is to decongest the city and allow freer movement of traffic across it as once the PRR is open for public use,  thousands of heavy and out of state vehicles will no longer need to use its roads.

Explaining the delay in calling for the tenders, a senior BDA officer says,  “We had expected to complete the survey by the end of January but it will take another month to complete. The PRR project has already been delayed for several years and now we are again facing a delay. Once the survey report is ready, we will have to send it to the government for its approval. But we could begin the construction in June or July if everything is finalised and all the approvals are granted.”

Another officer said he did not anticipate anymore delay as the land acquisition process had almost been completed and the process of handing over the compensation had already begun. “We will not have any further delays. Work on the project could begin in June,” he confirmed, adding that the cost of the Rs 6,000 crore PRR project could, however, go up due to various reasons.