Get ready for a tunnel ride as work to complete a 3.9-km underground road to ease Bengaluru’s traffic congestion will begin before the Lok Sabha elections. At a cost of Rs 690 per km, the project will cost the state exchequer Rs 2,700 crore.
The first of these tunnel roads will be built along the Ballari Road – from the Esteem Mall area near Hebbal to the Bangalore Palace grounds, said a senior official close to the project.
“The tunnel, which will initially be 3.9 km, will later be extended to around 17 km towards South Bengaluru’s Silk Board. We want to do this before the elections, let’s see how it works out,” said the senior officer from the Bengaluru Development Authority (BDA).
The brainchild of Karnataka deputy chief minister DK Shivakumar, he has been pushing for this underground tunnel project as Bengaluru is one of the most congested cities in the world. To ease surface traffic, divert vehicles in choke-point areas, he had earlier proposed the construction of a 190-km urban tunnel, aiming to establish east-west and north-south corridors across the city.
“It will stretch between Ballari Road, Old Madras Road, Esteem Mall Junction to Mekhri Circle, Miller Road, Chalukya Circle, Trinity Circle, Sarjapur Road, Hosur Road, Kanakapura Road to Krishna Rao Park, Mysore Road to Sirsi Circle, Magadi Road, Tumakuru Road to Yeshwantpur Junction, Outer Ring Road, Goraguntepalya, KR Puram, Silk Board areas have been identified,” the officer added.
Additional chief secretary of the urban development department, Rakesh Singh told News18 that the project proposal was initiated after much deliberation and working out details of the economics “as it is extremely expensive, difficult project and time consuming”.
“However, it has two to three great advantages. One major advantage is that there is no need to separately acquire land, and we have also been able to identify proper entry and exit points,” he said.
Singh said as part of this project, the BDA has also issued an ‘expression of interest’ to a company that will suggest different forms of intervention to alleviate traffic, including elevated roads, flyovers and tunnels. He further said the first tunnel of 3.9 km will be built between the north and south stretch, which will become a component of a major tunnel along this route.
“If the project of tunnelling takes flight, then Karnataka also has a proposal to create a north-south-east-west tunnel for Bengaluru, which will span 42 km each. The initial part of the project we are doing with our own money, but we will also ask the Centre to contribute. Deputy CM Shivakumar, who is the man behind this ambitious project, met union transport minister Nitin Gadkari in this regard,” he added.
Another plan to create a tunnel road along the Outer Ring Road (ORR) of Bengaluru is also in the works. The ORR corridor, which is Bengaluru city’s information technology corridor, spans between Silk Board and Marathahalli up to Tin factory (around 35 km).
“We are contemplating how well we can do it. The road already exists on the surface and we have already identified the entry and exit points, which are major choke points. We will build them so that cars or vehicles can zip past seamlessly,” Singh said.
He also said for city infrastructure, intervention should not be one that will last 20 to 30 or 40 years, it should be imagined and implemented so that it will last 200 to 500 years. “In a city like Bengaluru, we are still making roads that are 9 metres, 18 or 24 metres broad. We should imagine roads to be built that are 1-km broad like in Myanmar. We have tried to replicate a big road like Kempegowda Bandavane on the outskirts of the city; it is a 100-m road and is almost complete. The peripheral road is also similar,” he added.
In the recently presented budget, Siddaramaiah also spoke about widening existing roads but expressed how difficult it is due to scarcity of land and problems in land acquisition. “In this backdrop, the state government has decided to resolve traffic congestion in the city by constructing underground tunnels,” Singh added.
Under ‘Sugama Sanchara-Brand Bengaluru’, an expert organisation of international repute has been engaged, the state government said. Based on their report, measures will be taken to ease congestion in Bengaluru.
“On a pilot basis, a tunnel will be constructed this year at Hebbal junction where there is high congestion. A novel concept of constructing all-weather roads by using space available within the canal buffer zone is being implemented. Under this scheme, a 100-km road is already being developed at a cost of Rs 200 crore. Additional 100-km roads will be developed this year,” the CM had announced as part of his budget speech.
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