Traffic jams cost Bengaluru Rs 3,700 crore per year

BENGALURU: Nobody who commutes to work daily needs figures to be convinced that Benga-luru's traffic situation is catastrophically bad. And yet, here are figures that put a number to what the city is losing crawling to work every day - 60 crore working hours a year!

This data comes from a consultancy agency that's preparing the 'revised master plan for Bengaluru 2031'. The agency has prepared a note on transport sector which says that the traffic in Bengaluru has become a "scourge", and is only becoming worse.

"Network speeds are dropping at an alarming rate as overcapacity of its junctions and links are being reached and traffic jams have become the order of the day. Being a victim of its own success, Bengaluru's traffic infrastructure has just not been able to keep pace with the fast-growing IT industry..." says the report.

The city is home to more than 10 million people. And its strained networks are loaded with more than 90 lakh vehicular trips every day. City's bus service operator Bangalore Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) has a fleet of 6,000 buses with which it runs about 3,000 trips a day, but this is hardly enough.

Impact on economy

The economic losses due to traffic congestion are huge. It is estimated that it causes fuel losses to the tune of 2.8 lakh litres per hour (amounting to nearly 50 crore litres per year). If you also include the number of work hours lost, this translates to a loss of Rs 3,700 crore per year. And because we're far from a lasting solution, these figures are only taking a turn for the worse.

The above data collection has been focused to providing inputs to the development of the model. Socioeconomic household survey was taken from 10,130 samples from 13 locations.

The modelling process

According to the report, the modelling exercise used the Cube Voyager technology. A detailed road network was first prepared, which included more than 15,000 links with the help of data from the GIS (geographical information system) team. On this road network, 2,300 bus routes where coded.

All BBMP wards and villages within the BDA limits were considered individual zones. The model was extended to include the Bengaluru metropolitan region as well. The origin and destination data was estimated from the earlier comprehensive traffic and transportation study calibrated functions, and further refined and brought up-to-date through a process called matrix estimation from counts.

The report reads: "A conventional four-stage model was calibrated for Bengaluru afresh, and validated across screen lines to prove that the input data is satisfactorily representing city travel. The model was calibrated over 4 modes, cars and taxis, two-wheelers, autorickshaws and public transport. Trucks, MAVs, MCVs and bicycles where separately considered for the assignment. The model has been calibrated to represent the morning peak period - the journey to work period."

About data collection

* Socioeconomic household survey - 10,130 samples

* Screen lines/classified volume counts - 45 locations

* Speed and delay surveys - 375 km

* Turning volume counts - 14 locations

* Traffic data used from CCTVs at 50 locations

What's killing the city

* Life in Slo Mo: Avg speed down from 18 kmph (2008) to 11 kmph (2015)

* Too many trips: 90 lakh trips are undertaken every day; 52% by pvt vehicles and 48% in public transport

* Congestion central: City lacks a clearly defined road network hierarchy; parking is chaotic, leading to traffic jams