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BIAL Airport connectivity - a new four-lane expressway?

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Written By silkboard - 15 September, 2007

BIAL Traffic Bangalore

Deccan Herald ran long writeups on Airport connectivity last week, and their reporters did some realistic time checks as well. We know most of those things: extending Metro from Byappanahalli, the now famous six-lane BIAL expressway, check-in counters at railway station itself. But there were some plans and ideas I had not heard in greater details earlier.

The suggestion of Mono Rail from Mekhari Circle was one. Check-in counters at Mekhari circle and then a monorail taking you to the airport sounds like a good idea. You could run it all over NH-7 itself, which means no land acquisition related litigations or politics.

Other thing I had only heard bits and pieces on was the concept of Airport Special buses. 40 specially designed (enough space for luggage) Volvo (I hate the free publicity this bus company gets in our city, anyway) buses running between different parts of the city to BIAL, sounds like a good idea in theory. But I am not sure if middle class Bangaloreans trust punctuality of public transport - especially the bus variety - enough to prefer a bus over taxi or personal cars.

One more thing we have not heard a lot about is connectivity from Eastern side of Bangalore. To quote a bureaucrat from that Deccan Herald write-up:

"The state highways have been readied on the eastern side of the airport. The access from Whitefield, Devanahalli and Northern side of the airport will be a through four-lane expressway"

A four lane expressway!? Not that we don't know the road being talked about here. Some of us have noted construction work to upgrade a road that connects NH207 (a highway that runs along Varthur/Whitefield/Hoskote) to NH7 somewhere near the airport. See the map below if that route didn't make sense to you. You could go from ITPL (marker #1) out towards NH207 (markers #2/3/4), and then take that connecting road (marker #5) to go west and hit the new airport.

[gmap markers=numbers::12.987831318268467,77.7337646484375 + 13.03466247147165,77.76123046875 + 13.102217513557752,77.77839660644531 + 13.190479318453653,77.79487609863281 + 13.224571949858992,77.74749755859375 |zoom=11 |center=13.137659780203334,77.68501281738281 |width=500px |height=420px |id=macro_map |control=Small |type=Map]

Will this route be upgradd to a four-lane "expressway" as Mr V P Baligar says in that DH Metrolife article? I doubt that statement. I think Mr Baligar used the 'expressway' word to imply a fast four lane road and nothing more.

PS: If they are indeed thinking of a four-lane expressway from this side to BIAL/Devanahalli, then being a resident of Whitefield, I would be jumping with joy here.

COMMENTS

mono

tsubba - 15 September, 2007 - 13:17

mono is just the opinion of MN Srihari. not official stand. i'll get back on connectivity later. (some of my maps on GE are missing)

mekhri circle, hebbal etc,

tsubba - 16 September, 2007 - 02:51

mekhri circle, hebbal etc, are in the middle of nowhere. theyreally dont solve the problem of connectivity. you still have to get from SoBa, SEBa, EaBa, WeBA to these places. The difficult bottleneck is really access from city to hebbal. City owned RoW based system is the only way to solve this problem. here is a shot at how this ought to be solved eventually IMO. solves multiple problems and to me seems the only sustainable solution. variations to the theme possible. but the airport line has to fork deep into BLR and therefore has to be unimodal. all that is solid is planned for. All that is dotted one hopes will get built one day. (solid black lines are exisiting SWR rail lines)

errata

tsubba - 16 September, 2007 - 03:04

dotted red should continue along mysore rd, instead of merging with solid red(kanakapura rd) in the south.

Access to airport

arunvishvin - 17 September, 2007 - 03:53

why not they provide an underground railway to the airport, and the stations can be at key points for the passengers to board. That will be efficient no land grabbing issues. This method has been adopted by most of the big cities where underground metro rail were introduced when the city got populated with buildings....and roads.

250 objections filed against expressway

vlnarayan - 17 October, 2007 - 02:16

BANGALORE: The expressway project connecting the Outer Ring Road, near Horamavu, to the international airport at Devanahalli, that has been re-designated a Special State Highway, has received about 250 objections from the public against the alignment of the road and the project. The Public Works Department, that has notified the project as a special State Highway, had invited objections from the people and had given 60 days’ time to file objections, if any. Tuesday was the last day for filing objections. The objections would be categorised based on the reasons and the date of filing the objection, and nearly 160 objections had been categorised already, a senior PWD official told The Hindu. The expressway project was declared as a Special State Highway on July 24, under Karnataka Highways Act 1964, in an effort to expedite land acquisition process for the project that has witnessed protests by residents and farmers. The official said that once the department completed compiling objections, a date would be fixed to hear the version of the people on the project. “We are not sure if a public hearing would be held on the issue, but the project-affected families would be given a chance to air their views,” the official added. One of the objections filed by P. Ramanujan, who is set to lose his property , said that the six-lane high-speed express highway and State Highway (Special –1) did not adhere to the March notification or Comprehensive Development Plan drawing.

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