Bangalore, the place I've made home (for the moment) is one of those places that keeps buzzing with people, friendly with the young crowd, an oasis of IT jobs (resulting in tremendous job opportunities for cigarette retailers), filled with cool hotels and food joints, has an international touch to it and most of all has the kind of traffic that would make you want to jump off the first 10 storey building that could be spotted. Wonderful place really.
I started pondering about the last feature of bangalore - the traffic. Its something that's bothered me deeply since the early 2000s. The time of S M Krishna and the big IT influx. Bangalore, though was the place I used to visit for my summer vacations, became a place I would avoid at all costs during my Engineering days. I want Bangalore to be better than what it is now. Especially the traffic. Bangalore has all these cool places strewn about in Jaynagar, JP Nagar, UB city, Residency road, Malleshwaram... but in the short window of a day, which closes at 11PM (a seriously whack in a balls for a late night party), it sometimes gets close to impossible to get to these places. How can this situation get better?
I gathered information about the upcoming phases of 'Namma Metro' and and the Monorail / Light Rail Transport. Looks like there's going to be a good network of quick public transport when that's done. Here's one map I created to indicate the transport lines that will be generated in the next 10, or so, years.
I think you can click on the map to view a larger image. Here are some details about the map:
Purple Line - East/West line from Mysore road - MG Road - Whitefield
Green Line - From Anjanapura (Kanakpura Rd + NICE Rd Jn.) - Banashankari Temple - Majestic - Yeshwantpur - Peenya - BMIC
Red Line - This is a Phase II thing. Gottigere - Jayadeva Hospital - Diary Circle - MG Road - Manyata
Yellow (Brown) Line - Another Phase II thing. RV Road - Silk Board - Electronic City
Black Lines - These are the Monorail / LRT system that will be coming up. This seems to be waaay cooler than the Metro that's being constructed now. Monorail in Bangalore will be comparable to the ones in Paris, Memphis and Moscow. That's awesome! Mono/LRT will be connecting places to the Metro.
Black Cricles - These are the 4 main Metro to Metro interchanges. I think they will be constructed such that you can move from one station to another without having to get down the stairs and back up again. You'll always be in the Metro station area
Grey Circles - These will be the Mono to Metro or Mono to Mono interchanges. No clue how these will be. It will also be very interesting to see how the Monorail stations will be designed.
Thinking about all these gives me goosebumps. It reminds me of my days in US changing from Jersey Shore light rail to PATH and then to NY Subway... Travelling in those is a different experience as compared to driving a motorcycle in Bangalore for a fair 1/5ths of a day while breathing varied doses of dust and smoke and diesel smoke and cement dust and what not. The first thing is you're not driving and your hands and eyes and ears are free. You can utilize that portion of the day to do something useful like arranging the icons on your smartphone or reading a novel or just talk to another person in the train. I for one will just trip on the areal view of things around me. The fact that most part of the Metro and the Monorail system will be pretty high off the ground makes me wanna ride it right now.
The biggest advantage of this would be a reduction in traffic. A better connectivity would definitely encourage people to use this system than drive around themselves. This internally brings about another change - People will walk more and get a bit healthier. Walking a kilo meter or so a day and then travelling in an AC bogie beats no walking and driving in a could of dust and smoke and diesel smoke and cement dust and what not...
At the end of all these comes our responsibility in keeping things clean and in a good condition that we feel like using it. If we start screwing around with it and start complaining about the things we screwed up ourselves we'll have less fun. Just like the way we've fucked around with the traffic. We don't follow the rules, we overtake from the wrong side, we don't show signals properly and we do all kinda bad driving and we complain about bad traffic.
All in all... Im looking forward to make Bangalore better, a bit more peaceful, a bit greener and a bit more homely.
I started pondering about the last feature of bangalore - the traffic. Its something that's bothered me deeply since the early 2000s. The time of S M Krishna and the big IT influx. Bangalore, though was the place I used to visit for my summer vacations, became a place I would avoid at all costs during my Engineering days. I want Bangalore to be better than what it is now. Especially the traffic. Bangalore has all these cool places strewn about in Jaynagar, JP Nagar, UB city, Residency road, Malleshwaram... but in the short window of a day, which closes at 11PM (a seriously whack in a balls for a late night party), it sometimes gets close to impossible to get to these places. How can this situation get better?
I gathered information about the upcoming phases of 'Namma Metro' and and the Monorail / Light Rail Transport. Looks like there's going to be a good network of quick public transport when that's done. Here's one map I created to indicate the transport lines that will be generated in the next 10, or so, years.
I think you can click on the map to view a larger image. Here are some details about the map:
Purple Line - East/West line from Mysore road - MG Road - Whitefield
Green Line - From Anjanapura (Kanakpura Rd + NICE Rd Jn.) - Banashankari Temple - Majestic - Yeshwantpur - Peenya - BMIC
Red Line - This is a Phase II thing. Gottigere - Jayadeva Hospital - Diary Circle - MG Road - Manyata
Yellow (Brown) Line - Another Phase II thing. RV Road - Silk Board - Electronic City
Black Lines - These are the Monorail / LRT system that will be coming up. This seems to be waaay cooler than the Metro that's being constructed now. Monorail in Bangalore will be comparable to the ones in Paris, Memphis and Moscow. That's awesome! Mono/LRT will be connecting places to the Metro.
Black Cricles - These are the 4 main Metro to Metro interchanges. I think they will be constructed such that you can move from one station to another without having to get down the stairs and back up again. You'll always be in the Metro station area
Grey Circles - These will be the Mono to Metro or Mono to Mono interchanges. No clue how these will be. It will also be very interesting to see how the Monorail stations will be designed.
Thinking about all these gives me goosebumps. It reminds me of my days in US changing from Jersey Shore light rail to PATH and then to NY Subway... Travelling in those is a different experience as compared to driving a motorcycle in Bangalore for a fair 1/5ths of a day while breathing varied doses of dust and smoke and diesel smoke and cement dust and what not. The first thing is you're not driving and your hands and eyes and ears are free. You can utilize that portion of the day to do something useful like arranging the icons on your smartphone or reading a novel or just talk to another person in the train. I for one will just trip on the areal view of things around me. The fact that most part of the Metro and the Monorail system will be pretty high off the ground makes me wanna ride it right now.
The biggest advantage of this would be a reduction in traffic. A better connectivity would definitely encourage people to use this system than drive around themselves. This internally brings about another change - People will walk more and get a bit healthier. Walking a kilo meter or so a day and then travelling in an AC bogie beats no walking and driving in a could of dust and smoke and diesel smoke and cement dust and what not...
At the end of all these comes our responsibility in keeping things clean and in a good condition that we feel like using it. If we start screwing around with it and start complaining about the things we screwed up ourselves we'll have less fun. Just like the way we've fucked around with the traffic. We don't follow the rules, we overtake from the wrong side, we don't show signals properly and we do all kinda bad driving and we complain about bad traffic.
All in all... Im looking forward to make Bangalore better, a bit more peaceful, a bit greener and a bit more homely.