Money can get you the best cars on the planet, but can't get you across Bangalore any faster than others. The last couple of weeks have been the most tortuous period that I have ever experienced in moving around Bangalore. I travel by the Intel shuttle everyday (Home - Intel, Outer ring road) and this is becoming more and more unpleasant everyday. Lucky that I won't have to do this much longer.
I travel about 25km each way everyday. Not a great distance, but the traffic that I encounter acts like a tiny magnifying glass that makes this look like 100km. On Friday, I had a glimpse of the number of vehicles that probably ply in Bangalore at any time. There was a traffic jam on the outer ring road extending from Sharjapur road to probably Airport road. That is a distance of about 7km. And assuming an average density of about 10 vehicles for every 10m (main road + service lane inclusive), there were about 7000 vehicles stranded on the stretch of road from Sharjapur road to Airport road. I saw almost every vehicle that I could think of - right from tractors to the Chevys' to the Toyotas' to the good old Maruthis'. Not to mention the two wheelers because I saw too many for the first time then I guess.
I was stuck midway between Sharjapur road and office for about half an hour on the service lane (our 'clever' driver saw the traffic on the main road and took the service lane and hence I managed to reach that far). Looking out of the window, I saw some guy in a Mercedes Benz shouting at his chauffeur telling him to go fast when there was no way he could move. I just smiled to myself. This guy might be rich, but Bangalore places everyone on an equal footing.
A huge number of apartments are coming up along that stretch of Ring road and I am sure most of the people who will live in those apartments can't get their vehicles out of the apartment in peak hour traffic.
After a lot of struggle, our driver managed to reach a location on the ring road about 1km from office at 10AM (I had left home at 8). It seemed like we would be stranded there for quite some time. So everyone in the shuttle walked the remaining distance to office - Not the most pleasant thing to do, but probably the best of the available choices.
When you add the indirect costs imposed by these infrastructural hazards to a business, is Bangalore still a economically better option than other places?
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2 comments:
I'm quite used to the traffic these days. There's no way out but to live with it.
And may be that's the price we pay for development and economic prosperity. Isn't that the case with all the major cities: New York, Bombay...
But the roads here still need to catch up, it's improving now though.
Good to see that it is improving. But still a long way to go.
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