Outer Ring Road

techies

white topping project

ORR

I used to take one hour to travel between office and home. But, last Friday, I literally took two hours to cross the Ramamurthy Nagar-Banaswadi underpasss ­ –A techie

The(ORR) is the lifeline for many commuters, especially, as this is the main carriageway that connects different parts of the city. However, the lateston a few stretches of thehas put the brakes on their travel plans.White topping work is being carried out in two underpasses on the ORR- Ramamurthy Nagar-Banaswadi underpass and the Nagawara underpass- and is restricting the flow of traffic on these stretches.N Harish Kumar, a techie, said, “I used to take one hour to travel between office and home. But, last Friday, I literally took two hours to cross the Ramamurthy Nagar-Banaswadi underpass.”The Ramamurthy Nagar-Banaswadi underpass is a key junction that connects Hebbal with KR Puram. Usually, there is a traffic pile up as one approaches KR Puram (from the flyover). However, now, there are twin traffic jams.The first one is at the underpass and the second one is at the flyover.Another techie, Kanika Devi, who also uses this route to commute to work, pointed that half of the three-lane road is being used for whitetopping.“There is a bus stop after the underpass and the drivers stop their vehicles on the other half of the road, to pick commuters up. As there are a number of buses, we need to wait till all of them move out of the area and as a result get stuck and therefore reach office late,” she said. She added that usually there is a surge in traffic after 11 am.Things are no better at the Nagawara underpass either. Divya John, a software engineer, who uses this route to commute to work, said that on this stretch the vehicular pile up starts from the Babusapalya grade separator itself and that they need to wait for a long time to cross the road.Meanwhile, police have said that there has a spike in traffic violations in both the underpasses.“Among the vehicle users, the bikers are the ones who use different routes to beat traffic. For example, to avoid the traffic at the Nagawara underpass, they take a shortcut towards Hennur service road and then join the main carriageway. This is resulting in more jams.“When contacted, BBMP officials said that they were aware of the traffic jams and hence have asked the contractors to quickly finish the project,” said a traffic police official.