Bangalore was a city made for waking and cycling, given its wide footpaths, shaded avenues and its short distances. A half-hour ride would invariably take you to the city’s outskirts. But today, a half-hour crawl in your vehicle takes you barely a few kilometres, given the traffic. Now, while the metro promises to help you bypass the problem, it has transformed the stretch of roads it traverses from its origin in Byappanahalli to its destination on MG Road. Byappanahalli on Od Madras Road, was really the outskirts and close to the Isolation Hospital, where people with infectious diseases had to be isolated far from the city. Now, Isolation Hospital is no longer isolated and Old Madras Road hosts apartment complexes, super markets and glitzy offices.The metro then veers off Old Madras Road and cuts through Indiranagar’s main thoroughfare, Chinmaya Mission Hospital Road. The road, that was once desolate, had changed long before the metro arrived. Save for a row of shops at the beginning of the road near Adarsha cinema and a few near the intersection with Double Road, the stretch only had a few KHB Houses and sprawling bungalows. Though it was the main approach road to the locality, traffic was sparse, with a few double decker buses lumbering up and down the road periodically. And with no reason to widen it, the road was blessed with footpaths, allowing its residents to do all their visiting and shopping on foot. Today, the only walking possible in Indiranagar is on the treadmills in the several gyms.Leaving, Indiranagar, the metro presents a stark contrast as it crawls past the historic temple car in Ulsoor. The tall, granite stone temple car shed, that one saw vehicles, pedestrians and cows fight for space on the narrow, bustling, winding road, marked by chaos and cacophony, is now dwarfed by the tall metro piers. Today, the road that was once and lined by old establishments and flower sellers, has been straightened and widened, leading up to Trinity Circle.And as it reaches MG Road, the metro obscures everything on the road. The old colonial buildings, or what’s left of them, are the only reminders of the road’s past.Long before work on the metro was launched, planners and builders presented a concept of the metro with artists’ impressions of the metro on MG Road in the city’s newspapers. Of course, to the readers would dismiss as farfetched and something one only sees in sci-fi movies and comic books. Today, it’s no longer an artists’ impression. The metro is here, in concrete, steel and aluminium. With the metro, the city seems to have put its past behind and switched to higher gear, literally taking commuting to a new level.— [email protected]
Comments
0 comment