Opinion A ten-kilometre miracle

Raghu Shenoy,chief executive of a small-sized software outsourcing firm called BitbyBit Computers,is a regular on the elevated road in his sparkly new BMW. “You arrive back home at the end of the day in a better frame of mind,” he says of his new commute. Despite the clear road and the new wheels,the conscientious Shenoy stays under the 80-km-per-hour speed limit.

Commuting in Bangalore,India’s high-tech brand city,has long been a nightmare.  The fast-paced development of the last decade has led to the city outgrowing its roads,parking spaces,traffic control and public transport systems. Nearly 100,000 people work in the Electronics City suburb.  To them and the 30,000 vehicles that arrive there daily,the new 10-km stretch of unhindered commute has become a godsend. 

Carl Dujardin,managing director of the Indian unit of a Belgian software products company Xsysys Technologies,does not use the elevated expressway.  But the Belgian has still noted a difference. It used to take Dujardin 25 minutes to merely make it out of Electronics City after work each evening.  Now,traffic flow has eased because of the expressway and has reduced that wait to five minutes.  But with the polite exasperation of a Westerner,Dujardin adds that he is not sure how bad the bottleneck at the exit ramp of the elevated road is. (There is a bottleneck at the city end when thousands of commuters leave the elevated road and return to the reality of Bangalore’s choked streets.) 

Still,the elevated road is a boon to thousands of technology workers who arrive daily at Electronics City,says Prakash Rao,chief executive of the Electronics City Industries Association,a grouping of high-tech companies located there. The association has contributed 33 per cent of the costs to the project which is a private-public partnership.

That money appears well-spent.  Rao calculates that the new road has slashed one-way commute time to and from the city from about an hour to ten minutes each way.  That is an average saving of 1.5 man hours per day.  Add to that savings in fuel consumption and intangibles like healthcare bills because of the reduced stress. It all adds up to a neat pile,says Rao who says he is yet to accurately quantify the savings.

The expressway has barely opened but,as with many projects in Bangalore including the year-old international airport,there is a feeling that it is already inadequate for the city’s needs. The expressway has only four lanes.  Commuters say that it sometimes feels narrow and dangerous especially given the lack of lane discipline in India. Ashwathnarayana Reddy,a security guard at the Electronics City end of the road,says his task these days is to caution the hundreds of cab drivers filled with call centre workers who come hurtling down the ramp. The expressway has already seen its first fatal accident,even as the Bangalore city police and the National Highway Authority argue over who should pay for the cameras to deter the speed demons.

Some say that the 7.6-billion rupee expressway,the country’s longest elevated road,may be the beginning of the end of Bangalore’s infrastructure woes. 

As a high-tech touch to the project,a month from now,frequent travellers to Electronics City may not even have to stop at the toll plaza to pay for their daily commute.  A unit mounted on the windshield of each car or bus can electronically track the deductions from a pre-paid chip as the commuter drives past.

The new road has become a sort of tourist marvel even for those who don’t usually travel down that stretch.  Many motorists are going up the elevated expressway to experience the joys of painless commuting.  If only Bangalore had a few more of those roads,its aspirations to be the next Silicon Valley or Beijing might cease to be a mere joke. 

saritha.rai@expessindia.com