Bengaluru traffic news: Hebbal junction decongestion measures working, say cops
Multiple agencies, including the civic body Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, traffic police and other civic agencies have been directed to coordinate efforts to find ways to reduce congestion in Bengaluru.
The Bengaluru city traffic police on Monday said that its experiment on Hebbal junction, one of the city’s most congested points, is yielding results as the process is saving around 8-10 minutes of the commuters while crossing the flyover.
“After effecting change in traffic flow at Hebbal junction, we studied the time taken to cross it through flyover at 9 am (peak hour) on Monday. Kempapura to Hebbal police station main track directly entering from Kial flyover takes 14:30 minutes to reach Hebbal police station. Service road using flyover loop to reach Hebbal police station takes 15.58 minutes. Compared to earlier timing, now it is saving 8 to 10 minutes.Let us hope it will improve,” the Bengaluru city traffic police said in a post from its official Twitter handle and shared a video of the bottleneck.
Multiple agencies, including the civic body Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP), traffic police and other civic agencies have been directed to coordinate efforts to find ways to reduce congestion in Bengaluru where traffic snarls have become synonymous with the city.
“There is improvement in traffic movement. The police commissioner has said that we should have a technical survey on the impact if there is a reduction in congestion. We have hired a consultant for traffic study and we will know the level of improvement with the data they collect. We know there is improvement but to what extent will be shown by the data,” chief commissioner of the BBMP Tushar Girinath said on Monday.
The developments come at a time when the Basavaraj Bommai-led government is trying to rid the city of some of its problems, especially bringing down traffic as over 10 million vehicles ply on the streets of Bengaluru.
Multiple agencies are trying to find short-term and long-term solutions to reduce traffic.
HT had earlier reported that in Hebbal measures were put in place to restrict criss-crossing of vehicles from the service lane into the main flyover towards the city from Bengaluru International Airport.
Read: Bengaluru: Hebbal junction gets new traffic rules. Here are some steps to follow
BR Ravikanthe Gowda, the joint commissioner of police (traffic) had earlier told HT that the department and the private data collection agency will monitor the progress for at least 15 days.
According to government data, the number of vehicles in Bengaluru has increased from 50.33 lakh in 2011-12 to 1.04 crore till March 2022. Of the total vehicles registered in the city, more than 69.31 lakh are two-wheelers and 21.97 lakh are cars, according to a report in The Hindu.
According to the city traffic police department, of the total vehicle density, two-wheelers account for 70% of all vehicles, 15% are cars, 4% are auto rickshaws and the remaining are buses, vans and tempos.
The commuters in Bengaluru lost over 110 hours of time per year caught in traffic jams, according to a 2021 report by Netherlands-based TomTom.
Previously, chief minister Basavaraj Bommai had directed his administration to ease the traffic in at least 10 choked junctions of the city. Bommai has also made easing traffic in Bengaluru a priority ahead of the BBMP elections, which is likely to be held later this year.