Team-BHP - All Roads to Kerala

Happy New Year everyone!

Drove from Kollam to Blr on 30th Dec. Door to door took 14.5 hours with 2 breaks of 45 mins each. Started at 5:15AM from Kollam and reached home in East Blr at 7:45PM. One of most the time-consuming drives I had.

Took Kollam - Allpy - Ekm - Thrissur - Plkd - Salem - Blr route instead of the usual Punalur - Senkottai - Madurai - Dindigul one.

Kollam to Alathur, near Palakkad (232 Kms) was covered pretty fast (4.5 hrs) since it was early morning. From there onwards it was continuous traffic all the way till BLR. Palakkad highway is a joke with signals every 1-2 Km and long queues to cross them. L&T byepass is another big joke and driving that 2 lane section is very risky too.

Hosur to home, last 45Kms took 2 hours, thanks to crazy evening traffic.

All in all, a good learning on being more patient, calm and mindful :)

Quote:

Originally Posted by pms (Post 5690554)

Drove from Kollam to Blr on 30th Dec. Door to door took 14.5 hours with 2 breaks of 45 mins each. Started at 5:15AM from Kollam and reached home in East Blr at 7:45PM. One of most the time-consuming drives I had.

You must consider yourself lucky if you just managed to escape the huge traffic jam a few kms after Krishnagiri. A truck overturned and caught fire and we were stuck at the same place for over 2 hours - so Salem to NICE road entrance took 5 hours+ for me this evening ! 😪

Quote:

Originally Posted by kala (Post 5690598)

True! It took me 6 hours to travel from Salem to Bangalore. 34 kmph is the average speed I could manage. Literally city traffic on NH44. Including ~2 hours of bumper-to-bumper traffic. It was terrible. :sadface

I still don’t know what happened at Kariamangalam (between Dharmapuri and Krishnagiri) for them to close the highway and divert the traffic through rurals.

Edit: It looks like the tanker caught fire near the above-mentioned location, before Krishnagiri. Any idea about congestion after Krishnagiri?

We were caught up in this jam just after it happened as we saw the fire trucks trying to get through the caught up traffic and fire men running towards the incident. We had just crossed the Krishnagiri toll and saw the entire main highway was blocked and all traffic diverted to the service road.

https://youtu.be/iP7qkZtfcEA?si=RwEl-hx0d0tXtl-9

Thankfully we were able to reverse out into a side road (following some local traffic and a cab) and join the Rayakotta - Hosur highway. We lost ~90 mins.

You are paying a whopping ~1000Rs as toll one way from Thrissur to Bangalore. But the authorities are somehow hell bent on making the trip as difficult as possible for the commuters. When there is festival rush, what you do.. undertake maintenance work and block 2-3 lanes of traffic.
When there is choc block traffic you don't have common sense to remove the innovative zig zag barricades and make the traffic even worse. Many places unnecessary flyover works are pending for years. Most signals on NH in Kerala have lower priority for highway traffic.
Things have deteriorated so bad last 2-3 years.

I came through the Dimbam ghats to avoid the crazy queues at barricades, flyover works, toll plazas etc. It was a peaceful drive with a fishy lunch break at Bhavanisagar dam.

While going to Kerala on the previous weekend, we started on Friday evening and took a break at Salem to avoid the weekend rush, but Salem Bangalore took close to 5 hours.

It is true that the travel time has only gone up in the last few years through these highways

Quote:

Originally Posted by gadadhar (Post 5690769)

Infact the google maps was not showing the usual Salem route the reason being road closures. Can you imagine the audacity of authorities to close down roads during festive rush? This route was a breeze 2 years back. Got progressively bad due to poor maintenance, zig zag barricades and unwarranted flyover constructions. The L & T bypass don't even need a mention for the kind of pain point it has become.

The never ending construction mode is a clever ploy by the toll management companies to keep increasing the tolls showing increasing maintenance expenses.

Quote:

Originally Posted by poloman (Post 5690799)

Infact the google maps was not showing the usual Salem route the reason being road closures.

Yes, and I thought my Gmaps has developed some issue and checked on other phones to confirm :)

It is the inconsiderate attitude of the local authorities than the lack of facilities creating bulk of the issues. Wondering if the consumer rights will come in to play for lack of service here where heavy tolls are levied on top of the road taxes.

I was travelling back to Bangalore yesterday (jan 2nd) from Kochi and was stuck in traffic after hosur around 3:30 PM. Any idea why this traffic jam happened yesterday?
Traffic was standstill on the highway.I checked gmaps and it was showing red till Hosur checkpost. Luckily i took Uturn and took the Hosur-Chikkatirupathi -Whitefield route to reach home.

All planning a trip from pathanamthitta to Vellore .

option 1 : pathanamthitta - Mundakayam-periyar-kumily -theni -dindigul-salem -krishnagiri- vellore

option 2 : pathanamthitta - tenkasi- thriunelveli-madurai -dindigul-salem -krishnagiri- vellore

if anyone has travelled along option 1 /2 recently can you please share the road condition

Traffic on NH44 & NH544 is increasing year on year. In the last 10 years I have observed truck traffic has multiplied and post covid, personal vehicles too. We are going back to the olden days before these 4/6 lane highways, where it used to take 13-14 hours easily to just reach Kochi from BLR. Our infrastructure development is not in pace or future proof to anticipate and manage this traffic growth. Though it's happening, not at the right pace. The section of NH44 & NH544 needs a makeover ASAP making it signal free in KL section, barrier free toll gates, expanding the L&T byepass, and making it 6 lane whereover possible, at least the whole of TN section if land can be acquired.

This was one such year-end vacation that won't be forgotten easily, by many who used this highway to travel to & fro from KL, and possibly parts of TN :). The joy of driving on this highway is waning fast and its more of an anxiety, "when" you will reach the destination. It's not too far away that even hardcore enthusiasts might stick with overnight trains and buses. Hope I am proven wrong, and things change for the better.

Quote:

Originally Posted by pms (Post 5699773)

The issue is with barricades on the highway that's creating bottlenecks, there are too many blockades created with no thought to safety. The permission to toll without completing the project is what has created this mess.

You're right, we'll be back to the old commute times in a few years, there's zero improvement, every district police has put their share of barricades to make traveling dangerous and slow. Kerala has lousy highways, TN has created them.