On the eve of Brexit,there was a watsapp joke doing the rounds in Bangalore.
It went thus-'52% people in Bangalore wanted to escape from Bangalore and decided to do 'Bangxit'. But unfortunately,they could not escape and got stuck in Silk Board Traffic'. And the reply for this message was even more hilarious-'And the rest 48% got stuck in Marathahalli traffic'.
No more words are needed to describe the horrible traffic jams Bangaloreans have to endure.
No number of flyovers,foot-over-bridges or underpasses seem to be enough for the teeming metropolis.At least the above mentioned two spots are major bottlenecks in Bangalore.
Traffic seems to be pouring in from all directions in these two junctions.It is not that the civic body has not done anything to ease the congestion.Bridges have been built and signals have been installed at these intersections to regulate the traffic flow.But nothing seems to be working.
Day by day,the situation only seems to get worser. Traffic snarls have become an everyday affair.
My travails are similar to any other Bangalorean when it comes to the traffic jams.It takes one and a half an hour to reach my workplace in the busy traffic.Ideally,without traffic it must be taking hardly 20-25 minutes.But it never happens.Such is the state of traffic that you can have a good nap in the bus by the time you reach your workplace.
The traffic police tried different tricks to ease the congestion.They placed blocks on the road to divert traffic so that all the vehicles don't converge together at the same point.That only led to even more chaos.Vehicles had to do a one-kilometer ride to take an U-turn.Traffic got blocked in the U-turn area.
And if it rains,rest assured you are not going to reach your destination on time.The roads are water-logged and traffic moves at a snail's pace.Worse,sometimes it doesn't move at all.It is a pain to be seated in a car on a rainy day,with all window glasses up and having to endure the honking vehicles around.
Bangalore is a classic example of unplanned urbanization taking its toll on vehicular movement.New areas in Bangalore do not even have proper roads,complicating the already compounded traffic problem.Pot-holes and lack of footpaths further add to Bangalore traffic woes.
Good roads,innovative solutions for traffic movement and signal-free zones will go a long way in making Bangalore city travel more tolerable.Better traffic movement leads to lesser pollution and is an indicator of better living conditions.Hoping that the smart-city initiatives give an impetus to urban traffic issues.
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Written as part of Day 5 of Write Tribe Festival of Words #5
