IISc professor Ashish Verma cautioned that the Rs 25,495 crore elevated corridor will only create 53 new traffic bottlenecks as it will only transfer congestion from one part of the city to another.

Verma, Associate Professor, Transportation Systems Engineering, said the government was investing a huge amount of money and it was essential to understand how space would be utilised in the coming years.

Presenting a case study with macro simulation framework, he said the increased road space will only lead to a spike in fuel consumption and emission. “Though elevated corridor will come up at the core area, the project will affect the entire Bengaluru Metropolitan Region. The capacity will stagnate by 2030 as traffic from all the connecting roads will be sucked into the elevated roads,” he said.

Verma pitched for replacing the road corridor with a Metro network. With the help of data from his research, the professor said Metro will prove to be an effective solution. “The road corridor can reduce total travel time by a maximum of 5.3% but Metro can bring down by 53.4% in 2030,” he said.