Protest against the first steel flyover in Bengaluru

BENGALURU: Even as the city municipal corporation is preparing to spend Rs 50 crore on a 330-metre steel flyover at the Shivananda Circle, public ire against the project threatens to spill on to the streets.

This comes close on the heels of the nowcancelled `1,800-crore steel flyover between Basaveshwara Circle and Hebbal.Unprecedented citizen protests late last year brought the mammoth project to a halt. The four-lane bidirectional structure is proposed along the wide Hare Krishna Road which narrows down to a two-lane road at the railway underbridge (RUB) closer to Nehru circle. This logic has not gone down well with the residents.

Residents believe no flyover can ease traffic at the junction until the RUB, barely 200 metres away, is widened.

“Does it make sense to spend `50 crore for a project which only adds chaos?“ asks Mahesh Sivananda, a resident who took the RTI route to get details of the project.“The corporation should instead widen the narrow railway bridge, where traffic piles up,“ he added.

While the carriageway at the junction is 124-feet wide, the Hare Krishna Road (from Race Course towards Seshadripuram) progressively tapers, narrowing down to 70 feet near the RUB. Residents point out that traffic at the Shivananada junction will reduce once the Kino Theatre road is opened for traffic.

Having gathered details, Sivananda and others are holding a silent protest this Sunday. The protestors are backed by Citizens for Bengaluru, which led the campaign against the first steel flyover.

“The residents do not want this project.They have come to us for help and we are supporting them,“ Srinivas Alavilli, coordinator, CfB, said.

Architect Naresh V Narasimhan termed it a `money-making project'. Supporting the idea of widening the RUB, he said: “The government wants to build flyovers despite knowing that citizens do not want such projects. Flyovers are required only on the ring road that interlinks with arterial road and at railway crossings,“ he said.

KG Raghavan, president of Madhavnagar Residents' Welfare Association, however, believes that both the steel flyover and a wider RUB were necessary.

Mayor G Padmavathi gave the issue a political colour. “The protesters are backed by the BJP and some of them are not even Bengalureans. They do not like the Congress government taking up any developmental work,“ she alleged.

The project was conceived when the BJP was ruling in the BBMP council, she noted.

KT Nagaraj, BBMP's Chief Engineer (Project Central), said there was no proposal to widen the railway under bridge.