B'lore unveils Rs. 18,407-cr road corridor

In order to decongest the Bangalore city, the state government is contemplating to build the most ambitious and expensive east-west-north-south elevated road corridor. The 109 km long road-on-road project, which is estimated to cost Rs. 18,407cr, promises a 45 minute travelling time from one end of the city to the other. According to the director of the centre for SMART Cities, RK Misra, one of the project's promoters, the move will decongest city roads as there will be no need for long-distance vehicles to pass through the city and land acquisition too, is not going to be a major hurdle as the elevated corridor as it will come up on the median. Soil testing in some parts of the city is the only indication of the project's presence. Even smaller, short-term mobility projects see time and cost overruns. While the Goraguntepalya flyover overshot the deadline by four years, the Okalipuram signal-free 8-lane corridor was started four years after its foundation stone was laid. While these are conventional infrastructure projects, Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike, the civic administrator, leaped into the future to pick out a driverless personal rapid transit system, popularly known as Metrino, to propel Bengaluru into the Smart City league.