Saturday, April 16, 2011

Horn OK Please!

Yes, like you might have already guessed looking at the subject line, this post is from the frustration caused by all the unnecessary peem peem pom pom you keep hearing while on the roads.       What i fail to understand is why dont people realize there must be a reason to put that unpleasent noise on others hears. Once the driver of a cab i was travelling in, kept honkin like every 30 seconds or so. We were once in an empty stretch wit no soul in like quarter km radius and he honked! I got super irritated n asked him for the reason n guess wat, he dint even realize he had honked! He said he had gotten the habit n keep doing it! In another instance a different driver said the city's traffic these days is such that you have to keep honking!     What both of these said made no sense to me. It only worsend my frustration! My urge is please push that button only when necessary. If you have got habituated pl get out of it, if you have the same thought as of the second driver i talke about earlier, understand that everyone else in the traffic is as frustrated as you and honking doesnt help it but makes it worse. Honk less, avoid giving headache particularly to migrane patients like me! :-)Driving is not just being able to shift gears n get the vehicle to move, have some common sense!

Friday, April 1, 2011

Daari Yaavudhayya Vaikuntakke!


All roads appear to lead to “Vaikunta” these days in Bangalore! While infrastructure development is good it should be planned well. Shouldn’t BDA/BBMP first understand how and who will be affected by each of the projects starting and prioritize accordingly?
                To give you an idea of what I am crying about, here is an example. Let’s say you stay in Vidyaranyapura, you start to travel to any part of the city you first hit the underpass work at BEL circle. The traffic jams are massive due to the road work, you crawl through it and continue. You hit the Mathikere bus stop area, less than 1 KM away, and there is a hole right in the middle of the road. God alone knows why that came there. Nevertheless, you move less than 1KM ahead and you are forced to take a right towards yeshvanthpur else you hit the underpass construction at IISC signal. Again, massive jams at Yeshvanthpur circle, you already know why. You either take the Mysore Lamps road or drive towards ISKCON. In the Mysore Lamps road you are forced again to get stuck in massive pileup because the ‘Kashi Mata road’ escape is closed, thanks to BWSSB (they somehow are always up to date on all road work that goes on and ensure that they start laying pipes right in the place where the situation can be made worse). Forget the Mysore lamps road, you are on the Iskon road.. tada! You hit the Metro construction and adding to the fun is BWSSB again!
                I can go on and on building routes from anywhere to anywhere else in the city and bet you that you will hit those construction points more number of times than the number of junctions you drove freely. This the situation is most parts of the City, Outer Ring road, Banaswadi, Hennur, Nagarbavi, Yeshvanthpur, Malleshwaram, Rajajinagar, Vijayanagar, Malleshwaram, Vidhanasoudha area etc etc.
                Even more elongating the pain is the fact that after the flyover/underpass construction the road around it, which would be completely destroyed due to the work, will be left as is. For instance the Yeshvanthpur flyover again, it hasn’t been of much use for traffic from RTO and Mysore Lamps route however the road under it is so bad that you would prefer to drive over the flyover and go around an extra 5KM to avoid that route.
                Can we not please please do a better job, BBMP, BDA & BWSSB ?