New ORR top, no concrete plan: Motorists livid in north Bengaluru

BENGALURU: Work on a concrete top for the Outer Ring Road (ORR) between Hebbal and Hennur has reduced traffic to a crawl on the stretch, with vehicles taking between 45 minutes and an hour to traverse a distance that earlier took just 15 minutes.
The Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike was supposed to start whitetopping the entire width of a 2.7-km section, twolane carriageway — from Hebbal to Hennur — on August 27 and complete it by November
11.After a trial run resulted in severe traffic congestion, however, the BBMP changed its plan and decided to start work on only one of the two lanes in the first week of September.
After a month, however, it’s clear that the change of plan did little to fix the problems that lakhs of people have while commuting on the stretch. Manyata Tech Park, near where the work is in progress. A TOI team on a twowheeler took 45 minutes to complete a peak-hour ride (starting at 9.30am) from the Hebbal flyover to the Hennur junction on Thursday. Squeezed off the single lane available for use, vehicles spilled over to the service road.
IT consultant Shivakumar Kalyan Shettar said it takes him an hour to reach his office in Manyata Tech Park from the Hebbal flyover. “I earlier covered the distance in 15 to 20 minutes,” he said.
Embassy Services, which manages Manyata, sent an email to the firms in the tech park, asking them to take precautions to avoid putting out employees. These include “staggered shifts or working from home if it’s an option, arriving early and leaving early or arriving late and leaving late, and opting for public transport or carpooling”.
The situation is so bad, around half-a-dozen traffic police officers stationed near Manyata Embassy Tech Park have for the past few days been using loudspeakers to direct motorists. Commuters using public transport like BMTC buses are worst affected.
Requesting the chief minister and the deputy chief minister to visit ORR near Hebbal, commuter Sachin M Kumar tweeted: “I think you should visit the Ring Road near Hebbal now. You will know the real pain of commuters due to whitetopping.”
It’s been almost 10 months since the BBMP kicked off its whitetopping project — trumpeted as the ultimate solution to the city’s never-ending road problems — but only 20% to 25% of the work has been completed. The civic body started whitetopping eight stretches in the first phase of the ?723.7-crore project in late 2017, but discontinued the work after complaints of traffic jams.