Great interview and great expose of the colossal greed that underlies city planning here. Any available land is now meant for the amusement cities/parks that the BSY govt fondly calls Global Investment!!

Yes its a great interview .
Hope the road widening stops and gives relief to local bangaloreans who have built their houses with hard earned money.
Yes we really dont understand the need for amusement parks ,already scarcity of water and where is the govt planning to give water to the park.
Somewhere the BSY govt pocket must be getting filled that's why thy are approving such projects .
They really not in improving the city in a stablised matter but just filling their pockets as long as they are in government.
Finally we people are the sufferers.
Time to have a real fight against these atrocities.

Great interview with openness.
It is true that the owners on ORR are worried and their future looks bleak in the event of losing well built residence/complex,meeting existing financial commitments. Many owners are aged between 50-60 years. Instead of leading a peaceful life, this Road Widening has disturbed, like a storm. Considering suffering anticipated by citizens, civic authorities, should drop road widening and announce publicly which will bring back cheers in society.

Some sort of a violent action against the BBMP officials may happen soon. People are just fed-up with these dim-witted buffoons running the city and looking at every nook and corner to make some more money.

The effort from this group of people is commendable and has changed my opinion of this issue. Initially I was thinking that widening the 100 ft road to a 150ft road is a good idea and that some property owners may have to co-operate in the larger good. _____________________________________
However now I am convinced that there are better ways of decongesting Bangalore than widening the ring road and other major roads in BDA developed areas: _____________________________________
1. BDA should advance the widening activity to roads that will be major arterial roads in a few years. For example, Uttarahalli road is a great connector from Banashankari to Mysore road. So it can ease traffic from the Ring road as well as divert a lot of traffic from Mysore road to other parts of the city. Further Uttarahalli road is still not prime land and acquisition will be relatively easier and cheaper now than in 5 years. There are many other examples of such 2nd tier roads around Bangalore that should be widened to 2+2 lane roads now rather than later. _____________________________________
2. BDA and BBMP should come up with a better mechanism of proposing plans and encouraging a public conversation of development plans. The current approach is to push through ill-designed plans without any public exposure or comment. There is an active effort to reduce clarity and transparency. This ill-planned approach is very obvious in various projects in and around Bangalore - the location of Devanahalli airport, the badly designed and implemented "magic box" underpasses, the ineffective two-level underpasses (eg. Magadi road) instead of the more useful three-level structure (eg. Dairy-circle).

More methods of decongesting Bangalore Traffic (contd.... sorry for multiple comments):_________
3. Owners in BDA layouts should not be punished because of additional traffic resulting from unplanned privately developed layouts (eg. Ittamadu). ___________________________________
4. Enforce zoning regulations. That means putting a stop to schemes such as Akrama-Sakrama. Akrama-Sakrama lets out one groups of people who are actively defying zoning regulations by expecting to pay a small non-punitive fine later and unjustly punishing owners who bought land in a "safe" BDA layout. _____________________________________
5. Bangalore still has many other arterial roads that need widening before "soft-targets" like Ring road - including some that the article points out - Goods shed road, road from Kathriguppe Ring road to Basavanagudi (thro' Vivekananda and Vidyapeeta) etc. _____________________________________
6. Have a just and fair compensation process - a great example is the Bangalore Metro process - very transparent and paid a compensation at market rates (http://bmrc.co.in/news.html - Rehabilitation Package,Thomas Committee report,Valuation of structures, Fair Market Value & Valuation sheet and http://bmrc.co.in/acquisition.html)

More methods of decongesting Bangalore Traffic (contd....)_____________
7. Encourage more projects like the Nice road - in fact it would have been great if the Nice road was a full loop - and went beyond Hosur road towards Sarjapura as well as beyond Tumkur road towards Bellary road and beyond. _____________________________________
8. Use of more friendly and signal free traffic structures like Rotaries or traffic circles instead of flyovers or underpasses - great examples are Sajjan Rao Circle and K.R. Circle - which are never a bottle neck in any time of the day
9. Take a holistic approach instead of a band-aid or piecemeal approach - widening roads should be in addition to other means of containing the growth like managing public transport better (more predictable BMTC timings), making some neighborhoods pedestrian only - Avenue road, commercial street, Gandhi Bazaar etc.

I am very sorry to state that Mr.Vishwas does not have any knowledge about problems of widening of Uttarahalli Main Road. I am a resident in one of the big complexes in that road for the past 7 years. The complex houses more than 200 families . The building was built in the year 2000 as per approved plans. I have studied the road alignment and it is just not possible to expand the road on the building side even by one foot since the entry and exit to the Basement where the entire infrastructure of the housing complex is situated will be destroyed.Apart from that, the Electric supply ,Water Supply,Sewage and Garbage disposal will also be seriously affected. The BBMP planners have failed to understand that there is a huge open area across the road and the road alignment could have taken that into account rather than destabilising 200 odd families under one structure. Moreover there are several bottlenecks on the entire stretch of Uttarahalli Road and beyond to Kengeri where severe traffic jams can take place.This road narrows down quite a bit at the end and the traffic flow comes to a dead stop. The plans to widen Our road is based on lack of planning and forethought of BBMP who have not thought of alternate ways to ease traffic congestion except widening of the road. This stretch can be made one way during peak hours which is only two times in a day . Heavy vehicles should be allowed only during night hours. Delicense vehicles older than 15 years and regulate issue of licenses for new vehicles. There should have been meetings between affected parties and the BBMP officials before such a drastic one sided decision is taken . I hope good sense prevails in the minds of those in power not to play with patience and tolerance of the Tax Paying Public. I invite Mr.Vishwas to have a discussion on several issues before passing on his comments without studying the problems of others.

well everything looks good to hear Mr Vishwas but heavy increase in vehicular count day by day is causing this chaos.
Any amount of technique would really not help because the root cause is increase in vehicular population and so many vehicles from outside state are running without any registration in karnataka .
Our known family friends are very upset with the fact that their house is marked for road widening and most of their property will go,they are very depressed with this fact they have been living their since 30 to 35 years .
I am not here to deny ur ideas Mr Vishwas but any amount of ideas wll not improve .
Government should stop growth in bangalore and somehow the vehicle population should be brought down That would be the best solution.
Pressure should be put on government to stop growth and bring down vehicle population.
And theme park outside karnataka for an abudabi absed business man .
Who wants this theme park we want more trees cant believe politicians are still thinking of fancy improvement rather than addressing people frustration about road widening.

Why Dont the traffic police & public transport department enforce a law, where an individual family is allowed only on car (i.e. one car per family) which will bring down the number of cars on road and also help in revenue of BMTC & other public transport also.

Road widening is not the solution. As long as the number of private vehicles on road are brought down.

Mr. Srinivasan, I agree with you that the area where the Brigade apartment is situated on Uttarahalli road, it is probably too late to do anything without destroying value as well as peace of mind to many people. Actually what I had in mind for 4-laning was the stretch of Uttarahalli road from the Uttarahalli Lake till Mysore road via RajeshwariNagar where there are not many big buildings and is relatively undeveloped. Further, if you consider traffic coming from Mysore Rd side, there is a natural split after the lake - one towards the rest of Uttarahalli Main road to Banashankari and other Subramanyapura road to Kanakapura road - where traffic can get easily divided. So my suggestion is to ease traffic by building roads peripherally in areas which are not very dense and will have fewer issues during land acquisition.

This also brings to focus the problem of zoning and enforcing regulation - are you positive that your apartment builder did not violate any rules during construction? That all the rules regarding offset from a main road or from a peripheral wall have been followed. That it was built as per approved plans does not mean much as we know that any plan can be sanctioned for a fee - If one BDA engineer had granted a plan, another BBMP official can challenge a building for violations. Which is why apartment buyers have to hold builders accountable at the time of construction rather than trying to defend a property 10 years down the line.

And this is precisely why these issues should be discussed and debated openly, as the considerations of a larger set of people will come out into the open, rather than the limited understanding of a few people (eg. BBMP).

Mr Bhanu Prakash,
I agree vehicle growth has to be controlled - and Karnataka is already on the right path with a 14% vehicle tax. You can argue that this can be increased further, but there is an economic cost to that. Till there is an efficient public transport system, policies to reduce vehicles will have a negative impact on movement of people and goods. In any case, this has another control mechanism in the form of fuel prices - it is only a matter of time before a liter of Petrol or Diesel will hit Rs. 100 - and will depress traffic.

This is a very good detailed story on the dilemma of development.

It is a common dilemma: the benefits are global but adverse impacts are local.

Venkatesh Murthy exemplifies the frustrations of the dilemma very articulately. He recommends many alternatives that result in adverse impacts being shifted elsewhere.

A limited access minimum four lane Outer Ring Road is essential in a major metropolitan area such as Bangalore. Given the expected development in Bangalore it would be prudent to have an eight lane ring road.

Mr. Murthy's complaints about the incompetence of concerned authorities is a tiresome and tiring story. Young people like him should enter politics and improve the system. Politics is a noble calling. It is not meaningful to sit on the sidelines and whine about politicians. If all the genuinely concerned people who have commented so far decide to enter politics the system will improve significantly.

Mr. Murthy makes an excellent point when it comes to compensation. Regrettably Guidance Value has very little connection to market value. Equally regrettable is that the current Bubble Value of properties in Bangalore is out of sync with true market values.

The most helpful way to address the large difference between Guidance Value and Bubble Value is to commission two independent property appraisals by qualified and experienced appraisers and arrive at a reasonable value.

I believe that Mr. Murthy is entitled to a fair compensation. I also believe that Bangalore needs an eight lane Outer Ring Road.

People who are so opposed to a high calibre ring road, admittedly out of genuine concerns for adverse impacts, may have to seriously ask themselves the kind of metropolis they want.

For some reason the story left me with the impression that the larger public interest of a high speed Outer Ring Road was under emphasized. Did I get the story line wrong?

I thank Mr.Vishwas for his reply to my views. My apartment complex was built by Brigade Group . I have studied the drawings given by them to us. We have given to BDA 460 Sq.Mtrs of land free of cost along the length of the road for widening purposes before construction started. An area of 2400 Sq.Ft was also given free to KPTCL to establish an Electricity Distribution office . We have left lot of open space free as per the agreements with BDA. Now how can we afford to give more space now and what is the justification? On the opposite side, Deccan Herald is having a huge open ground without any build up. The road alignment could have been on that side saving the lives of 200 odd families . Another important point is that we have given a set off around the building as per Fire Service regulations which are mandatory. The cutting of a huge chunk of our property on the road side is totally against the mandatory regulations of the Fire Dept as applicable to High Rise Building. There are alternate methods for easing the traffic without widening the road. I suggest that all those interested people should attend the meeting convened by " Save Bangalore Committee " on 4th July at 10.30 AM at NBA Bhavan, cubbon Park to take their advice and solve issues across the table before any damage is done to an existing residential complex .
I am available on my mobile 99003 09163 so that people like Mr.Vishwas can see our complex and how the problems can be solved without loss of property.

Re.Narasim Katary's views, I am sure his property is nowhere listed for demolition and his road is not in the 91 Nos listed.
It is very clear that he has not read several articles in Citizen matters about the incompetence of BBMP officials in all its activities and how they are bulldozing their way in a reckless manner. I expect educated and experienced people should think and try to find alternate solutions to this man made problems. People who are not concerned about others' problems should mind their own business and keep off from commenting.

BBMP has a bunch of non-planners (I wish to call them jokers!) in planning department. First they create chaos in the old well planned residential areas and they start ranting about road widening citing traffic jams. A normal citizen of Jayanagar and J P Nagar is appalled to see the recent traffic chaos in Jayanagar 9th Block near Ragigudda area because of unthoughtful grant of permission to Bangalore Central, Chrome, Big bazaar etc for opening their massive shops bang on the road without any parking spaces. At the place of Chrome, it was Woodies earlier and they did not have parking issue because they had planned the space well with parking space left, but look at Chrome area now. Same issue is plaguing 8th Main area of Dollars layout. MK Ahmed market and lot of other big shops are coming up with NO parking space bang in the middle of residential area. People are just parking cars on the roads to do shopping be it real or window shopping. Congestions - bound to happen and beautiful residential sites ? BBMP cares a dirt for them.

The main culprit in Bangalore crashing down is because we have non-planners in our BBMP and BDA offices who are just creating chaos by creating unwarranted shopping complexes in wrong places and then making money at the peril of poor citizens of Bangalore.