The problem with Bengaluru traffic is not merely that roads are crowded.
Namma Metro has expanded dramatically from its first 7-km stretch and now has around 96 km of operational network and 83 stations. Yet daily ridership is hovering around 10 lakh, well below the 30 lakh a day that had earlier been projected for the operational corridors. Because of traffic struck a chord with many residents, a recent viral video of a woman questioning what good Bengaluru’s pleasant weather was if she could not step out. The private vehicle therefore remains the easier option for many commuters. Because of the time it takes to move around it, that strength could become a weakness if the city becomes increasingly difficult to live in.
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Bengaluru’s traffic threatens its biggest advantages That gap says something important. BENGALURU: Bengaluru has plenty going for it. It has the jobs, the technology industry, a huge startup ecosystem, a young workforce and weather that many other Indian metros can only envy. For years, these have helped make the city one of India’s biggest magnets for professionals. Last-mile connectivity remains a major gap But there is a growing problem that threatens to take the shine off all these advantages: simply getting around the city. Her comparison with Hyderabad may have been casual, but it reflected a frustration that has become increasingly familiar to anyone who spends hours commuting across the city. Read more: ‘What should I do with good weather?’: Woman prefers Hyderabad over Bengaluru traffic in viral video When the commute becomes part of the problem The problem with Bengaluru traffic is not merely that roads are crowded. It is that nobody can be quite sure how long a journey will take. A distance that looks manageable on a map can become an hour-long ordeal during peak hours, and a minor accident, road repair or sudden downpour can make matters worse. The pressure is particularly visible along the city’s major employment corridors — the Outer Ring Road, Bellandur, Marathahalli, Silk Board, KR Puram, Whitefield and Electronic City. These are places where Bengaluru’s economic success is most visible, but also where the mismatch between jobs and mobility is hardest to ignore. Metro expansion hasn’t reduced traffic More Metro, but not fewer vehicles Bengaluru has not ignored public transport. A metro line can take thousands of people off the road, but only if it is convenient for the journey people actually need to make. For someone living several kilometres from a station and working far from another, the Metro may still involve a bus, auto, bike or cab at either end. The last mile remains the missing piece Bengaluru’s greatest strength has always been its ability to attract people looking for opportunity. Bengaluru has the jobs, the technology and the weather. The challenge now is to build a mobility system that lets people enjoy those advantages instead of spending a large part of their day simply trying to get from one part of the city to another. Download the TOI App.
The bus network handles an estimated 35-42 lakh passenger trips a day, considerably more than the current Metro ridership. Infosys co-founder Kris Gopalakrishnan recently highlighted the problem by pointing to a 31-km journey that took 2.5 hours. The question, therefore, should not be how many kilometres of Metro or how many buses the city has, but how easily a person can complete an entire journey.
Bengaluru’s mobility problem is, in many ways, a problem of connections. The city has Metro trains, BMTC buses, autos, cabs, two-wheelers and a growing range of app-based services. What it lacks is a seamless way of moving between them. A commuter may be perfectly willing to take the Metro but not if reaching the station means waiting for an unreliable bus or walking along a road with poor footpaths. The same problem appears after getting off the train. Unless the final few kilometres are convenient, safe and affordable, public transport will struggle to become the obvious choice. BMTC still carries the city’s daily load That makes BMTC central to any serious solution. For a city of Bengaluru’s size, buses can reach neighbourhoods and employment clusters that rail systems cannot cover on their own. The introduction of the One Karnataka Mobility App and WhatsApp-based bus ticketing is a useful step towards making public transport easier to access. But technology can only solve part of the problem. What matters on the ground is whether a commuter can find a bus quickly, whether it arrives on time and whether the connection to the next mode is reasonably smooth. Managing traffic instead of solving it Some of the city’s recent traffic measures underline just how difficult the situation has become. Traffic authorities have experimented with restrictions for two-wheelers, autos and goods vehicles on selected elevated corridors and flyovers, while making changes when diversions create fresh bottlenecks. The experience on the airport corridor is a good example of the dilemma. Restricting one category of vehicle may ease pressure at one point, but if the diverted traffic spills onto nearby roads, congestion simply moves elsewhere. Bengaluru increasingly appears to be managing a shortage of road space rather than having enough efficient alternatives to private vehicles. The cost is not just measured in minutes There is also a larger economic question here. For Bengaluru’s technology and services economy, commuting time is not simply an irritation at the end of a working day. It affects productivity, family life, employee satisfaction and even decisions about where companies locate offices. A person may move to Bengaluru for a well-paying technology job, but the calculation changes when that job comes with a daily commute of two hours each way. When journeys of this kind become routine, traffic stops being a civic inconvenience and becomes a competitiveness issue for the city. Can Bengaluru connect its own growth? The answer is unlikely to come from one more flyover, one more road-widening project or one more traffic restriction. Bengaluru needs its Metro, BMTC buses, walking routes, cycling infrastructure, autos and other modes to work as parts of the same system. New roads can certainly ease particular bottlenecks, but every improvement that makes a corridor faster can also encourage more traffic to use it. The recent festive rush, when buses on the Bengaluru-Mangaluru route were delayed by up to three hours, offered another reminder of how quickly the transport network comes under pressure when travel demand rises.