Another snag hits road to airport - Daily News & Analysis

DNA - Bangalore - Another snag hits road to airport - Daily News & Analysis

There seems to be no let up in agonies piling up on the vital Bellary Road linking the Bangalore International Airport to the city.

Jayamahal Road, connecting the airport, R T Nagar and Yeshwantpur to the eastern areas of the city and the central business districts, has now been partially closed on account of BWSSB works.

The Cantonment railway station-bound vehicles on Jayamahal Road now have to take a diversion through the narrow Nandidurga Road. With a virtual bumper-to-bumper crawl on the Nandidurga Road, there has been cascading effect on the Bellary Road, which already is constricted by the ongoing underpass and road-widening works.

The result: the journey to and fro from the airport has only become that much more agonizing.

The Bangalore Water Supply and Sewerage Board (BWSSB) is re-laying sanitary pipes on Jayamahal Road. Work on laying the sanitary pipes from Jayamahal to Miller's Road began on Monday.

"The Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) had built an underpass near the Cantonment railway station. While two underpasses have already been thrown open for vehicles, BBMP is planning to open the other two subways also. Hence, they have asked us to shift the existing pipelines," said Venkataraju, BWSSB chief engineer.

The Rs 12-lakh project involves laying new 300-mm sanitary pipes to a length of 2 km.

According to Venkataraju, it would take another month for the work to get completed.

But the BWSSB has been literally caught napping in having failed to do its ground work properly.

Without even a fair idea of the nature of the terrain on which it had to work, the agency began the work only to run into hard rocks.

"It is difficult to remove the hard rock and place pipes there. This is proving to be time-consuming," admitted Venkataraju.

"We have been asked to work in the afternoon and at night to avoid traffic jams during peak hours," he added.

Officials, however, refuse to acknowledge that traffic snarls have increased in the past few days. But the public has been inconvenienced.

"We are coordinating well with the traffic police and the work is not affecting the movement of vehicles," said the BWSSB chief engineer.

The R T Nagar police too said there were no traffic problems in their area as of now.

The citizens, however, try to brazen their way through the one-way rule by simply defying it.

"We weren't aware about the BWSSB work here. Anyway, If I had taken the Nandidurg Road it would mean taking too a long route to reach Cantonment," said Jeevan N, when DNA intercepted him while he was defying the one-way rule.