[audioholic]

Originally Posted by dass

take the U turn at the ISRO junction, which is wider and designed for the U turns. Now, the ring road is as usual blocked, our smart traffic cops have ensure the old airport road also is blocked

Yes exactly I wonder why people can't think about such simple differences. No point in allowing that U turn close to Yamaluru junction nor the new right turn on top of Marathahalli underpass. Instead for those wanting to heading towards kundanahalli they can simply use ISRO junction for U turn. Another blunder has been to open up the median towards service road towards Chinnappanahalli railway gate. Now people who take a U turn completely cut against traffic and head to the service road thus blocking the entire ORR heading south. Yesterday, due to railway gate being shut, this led to traffic backing up until ORR, and then the people trying to go here cut across the ORR and blocked it, bringing the whole ORR into standstill.

What's ironical these days is that due to parked vehicles removed on the service road, many a times I have a smooth drive on the service road as long as possible as the main road goes into stand still, just because one stopped vehicle in the left lane will lead to everyone cutting right ward into each other. By the time they finish their drama, the stopped vehicle on the left would have resumed moving and thus everyone wants to cut left. Thats the absolute stupidity that exists.

[balenoed_]

Originally Posted by audioholic

Another blunder has been to open up the median towards service road towards Chinnappanahalli railway gate. Now people who take a U turn completely cut against traffic and head to the service road thus blocking the entire ORR heading south.

But that opening is the way for people to access the Chinnapanahalli railway cross road. How else will they get there? Train issue is only once in a while and most cases the traffic beyond Kalamandir towards KR Puram is free. The choking point these days towards Silk Board is near Kalamandir and all the way until traffic bifurcates towards Panathur service road near the Panathur underpass.

[anandhsub]

Originally Posted by audioholic

Another blunder has been to open up the median towards service road towards Chinnappanahalli railway gate.

Originally Posted by balenoed_

But that opening is the way for people to access the Chinnapanahalli railway cross road. How else will they get there?

The only way out is to have a signal at isro junction. I dont know why the traffic police thinks these various streams of traffic will merge naturally.

On a side note, these days at night post 11 PM I am seeing cars and even trucks from the Dodannekundi Main road come on the wrong side on ORR to take the u turn at ISRO junction. I guess this is because the right turn in to the ORR service road (the wrong side towards Dominos) is now blocked, and they dont want to go till the Soul Space Arena flyover to take an u turn .

[audioholic]

Originally Posted by balenoed_

But that opening is the way for people to access the Chinnapanahalli railway cross road. How else will they get there? Train issue is only once in a while and most cases the traffic beyond Kalamandir towards KR Puram is free. The choking point these days towards Silk Board is near Kalamandir and all the way until traffic bifurcates towards Panathur service road near the Panathur underpass.

They should have cut the divider before the U turn and not right after it. For those who take U turn at ISRO, they should continue towards Marathahalli or if they really want to go towards Chinnappanahalli they must be asked to take Alpine Eco road.

[dass]

Originally Posted by balenoed_

But that opening is the way for people to access the Chinnapanahalli railway cross road. How else will they get there? Train issue is only once in a while and most cases the traffic beyond Kalamandir towards KR Puram is free. The choking point these days towards Silk Board is near Kalamandir and all the way until traffic bifurcates towards Panathur service road near the Panathur underpass.

The earlier mode worked without too many issues. The U turn back into the service road towards the railway track near the Ozone club. In their eagerness to try too many things, they are messing with what was working well as well. They should just focus on the existing bottlenecks, not create new ones.

[airguitar]

I have no idea why all firms still want to relocate to the traffic hotspot that ORR now is ? Good residential options for employees? (I have lived on the ORR for a few years - and those were the worst years of my life : taxis honking through the night, ambulances, police patrol vehicles, construction noise, construction dust, stressed out services like salons, atms, markets, gridlocked traffic, hopeless U turns - there was nothing admirable) ? Schools? Maybe it makes hiring easy to be located alongside other companies ( so that employees can say 'Boss, I have a personal errand' and do an interview or two over lunch ?). Maybe because when they all made plans for their offices, ORR was still developing and they grossly underestimated how ORR would look by the time they moved in ( 6-8 years hence )? Why did no industry leader or anyone else make the metro rail a need before they all moved in ? Why are companies still moving into the hotspot ? Did no one consider that flooding in the area ( the Kadubisanahalli area is a meeting point of the flood ways of two lakes - Challaghatta and Bellandur ) and that it would add to inconvenience and traffic snarls? For Christopher Nolan's sake, why is everyone so obsessed with setting up shop on ORR?

I just stare at all this in disbelief - 8 lakh people work on ORR. 8 lakh x average 2 hours commute per day x 150 days of work ( assuming 3 day in-office weeks ) = 1 crore person days lost in a year. This is productive time that people could spend with their families or finish up crucial office work or exercise to maintain better health. The pits.

Hollywood Joke
Q) Why did Michael Clayton not bother asking the Ola driver "Give me $50 worth"?
A) He knew that it would be spent doing just a single U turn.

[vharihar]

Marathahalli bridge on ORR deserves a major redesign, including land acquisition. It's a big bottleneck nowadays and that's not surprising, since it's it's the intersection of 2 arterial roads, viz. ORR and OAR (Old Airport Rd). If need be, they ought to compensate handsomely and acquire and demolish the nearby buildings/shops, and build an interchange there.

The elevated metro will render some grade separator constructs impossible, so one may have to consider elevated UTurns, etc (similar to Silkboard junction or some variation of it).

Either that, or install signals there on OAR along with 24x7 manning by traffic police, and make it work with signals, which it theoretically should work because it's got the basic structure of a diamond interchange, which we know works well in the US etc (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diamond_interchange).

Some thing has to be done. If minds are applied, I'm sure a solution can be designed.

[jkrishnakj]

Yesterday noon, I was driving through almost the entire Kanakpura road stretch. With rains drizzling all day yesterday, I could never drive on the right most lane. It was fully occupied by 2 wheelers, who want to continue riding, but staying under the Metro tracks above, all along. It was quite stressful, since the lanes now shift left and the left most lanes are usually occupied by unauthorised parking along the stretch.

[guyfrmblr]

Originally Posted by audioholic

Another blunder has been to open up the median towards service road towards Chinnappanahalli railway gate.

This is only going to get worse as around 2-3 massive tech parks are coming up in that narrow Chinnappanahalli road. All these tech parks have back gates and folks who work there will take this narrow road to commute to/from ORR.

Now people who take a U turn completely cut against traffic and head to the service road thus blocking the entire ORR heading south.

I have tried taking this U-Turn couple of times and have given up. It takes hand-eye-leg-mind (and all the organs in the body) coordination to complete the turn by cutting into 4-5 lanes of ORR traffic with almost zero visibility and get into the service road (along with 2-3 lanes of traffic trying to take U-Turn along with you + 2 lanes of traffic in the service road + 1 lane of wrong side drivers in the service road). I take the Alpine Eco road these days to reach Whitefield area from ORR.

[am1m]

Originally Posted by airguitar

I have no idea why all firms still want to relocate to the traffic hotspot that ORR now is ?...For Christopher Nolan's sake, why is everyone so obsessed with setting up shop on ORR?...1 crore person days lost in a year. This is productive time that people could spend with their families or finish up crucial office work or exercise to maintain better health.

Ah my friend, head over to the 'remote work/wfh thread' where those of us who attempt to raise this very point have been educated by our elders/betters/managers that 'in-person office co-ordination' trumps all these petty considerations and as employees we shouldn't complain since traffic is 'just part of the job description'!

Though I still wonder how many of the 'decision makers' have to ride a bike in that kind of ORR traffic everyday, especially when it rains.

I did for 3 years, managed to escape to a more enlightened organization, not exaggerating to say that has changed my life for the better. Am never going back to the ORR...at least not till the Metro is ready!

[harishhm74]

I spent 3 hrs (left RxDx whitefield at 5pm and reached my house in JP Nagar at 7:45pm) - no rain but it was just slow moving traffic due to narrowing of lanes from 3 to 2 or 1.5 on almost all flyovers due to metro work - it eased post Agara flyover (reached at 7:20pm) and was smooth from there on. Even the morning commute was bad (left at 8am and reached at 10am at Whitefield RxDx but mainly due to traffic jam at Rainbow hospital and was diverted to take u-turn after the flyover instead of under the flyover).

Waiting for Byappanahalli - KR Puram metro connection to open. If these evening travel times becomes the new normal, it is still effective for me to go via metro without this connection as it takes 1 hr on metro + 30min on road (on feeder routes) and is relatively stress free travel. Never felt the need since till end of May, the office commute on car was still a breeze (1hr to 1.5 hr max) except if some metro work obstructed the smooth flow occasionally.

[binand]

Originally Posted by balenoed_

But that opening is the way for people to access the Chinnapanahalli railway cross road.

Personally, I think things would be all round better if that railway gate is permanently shut down (from what I recall, the rail+road traffic there warrants an overpass or if that is not possible, assertion of the railway's right of way).

[deepak_misra]

Originally Posted by airguitar

Google maps had suggested 36 mins to work and I had taken the bait!

I have learnt the hard way:
If you are going via Marathahalli and HAL, add half an hour to what google tells you.
Taking side roads and small lanes on google recommendations is a very hit and miss. If stars are in your favour, it will save you time. If mercury is retrograde, you can get stuck for a long time as everyone starts followoing google.
Google makes a lot of goof ups with one ways so beware

I follow the add minimum half hour to google's prediction

[audioholic]

Update: Marathahalli experiment stopped. The U Turn on the bridge is closed and the previous routine is now followed. Will cause a build up between Tulsi Theater and the Yamaluru U turn but has eased traffic in other places.

Originally Posted by guyfrmblr

This is only going to get worse as around 2-3 massive tech parks are coming up in that narrow Chinnappanahalli road. All these tech parks have back gates and folks who work there will take this narrow road to commute to/from ORR.

.

Yes the new tech parks are atrocities with just no approach and the only respite has been the widening of the road between Graphite India and this tech park. However the back side of the park which has an exit towards that narrow railway gate road will become a nightmare. And I dont see a railway bridge being built there anytime soon, even though the road geometry will permit an easy overbridge there. Should see what is the result of the hosur railway line doubling since that will narrow down the road further.

Originally Posted by airguitar

I have no idea why all firms still want to relocate to the traffic hotspot that ORR now is ? Good residential options for employees? (I have lived on the ORR for a few years - and those were the worst years of my life :

Its perhaps because of easy supply of office space in this area. There are hardly any huge campuses to the west of Bengaluru and it might be a tough task to expand more seats if needed in very satellite areas.

I have to mention this company Dassault Systemes which has set up office near my house, in a prime locality in KR Road. Earlier they were located in Jayanagar and I guess this is a second location or they shifted. Whoever influenced that decision must be a staunch South Bangalore resident. If only my work suited that company I would have switched and enjoyed a five minute commute or even a 15 minute walk be it Sunshine or rain. Apart from this every company with 1000+ staff would find it suitable only in the IT corridor unfortunately.

[ashis89]

Originally Posted by audioholic

Update: Marathahalli experiment stopped. The U Turn on the bridge is closed and the previous routine is now followed. Will cause a build up between Tulsi Theater and the Yamaluru U turn but has eased traffic in other places.
.

The u turns while going towards Yemalur, are already a big pain. The traffic piles up until Spice Garden or even Kundanahalli junction just because people are trying to take a u turn near Tulsi theatre. Last Friday, around 9:30pm, it took me 30+ mins on a scooter from Spice Garden junction till Yemalur junction. And this impacts everyone who's coming from Kundanahalli junction.

PS: I tried the internal road via Munnekolala to get onto the ORR while bypassing Marathahalli bridge, thinking that I can get through it on a scooter. That road was so jammed that pedestrians were also held up standing still.. Returned and went back onto Marathahalli bridge.