Journalism of Courage
The traffic heatmap shared by the Bengaluru traffic police department Monday showed lower-than-usual traffic congestion on the Tin Factory-KR Puram section after full operations started on the Challaghatta-Whitefield Metro Purple Line.
The October 9 trend showed that the length of traffic congestion on the Tin Factory-KR Puram section was only 1 km between 8 am and 10 am, compared to 2.1 km on September 25 (Monday). Traffic congestion is defined as the average length of the queue of vehicles.
In the evening peak hour between 4 pm and 6 pm, the congestion length further reduced to only 100 metre compared to 800 metre on a usual Monday. However, the length slightly increased to 200 metre by 6 pm.
Rainfall could also be one of the reasons for the dip in congestion on the October 9 evening. However, on September 25, the congestion length was 800 metre between 4 pm and 6 pm and it peaked to 1.3 km by 6 pm.
At Hoodi Junction, the congestion length was only 200 metre between 5 pm and 6 pm (October 9) compared to 900 metre on a typical Monday.
The heatmap, however, showed that the overall congestion length in the city was higher than usual this Monday, recording an average queue length of 31 km around 10 am. By 7 pm, the congestion length increased to 68.3 km. However, on September 25, the congestion length was 46 km around the same time.
Joint Commissioner (Traffic) Bengaluru M N Anucheth said, “On October 9, we saw fewer vehicles along the KR Puram stretch because of which the traffic flow was faster… A lot of people refrained from bringing and parking their vehicles at Baiyappanahalli which allowed smooth flow of traffic. As a result, the queue length of vehicles going towards KR Puram railway station was less.”
DCP East (Traffic) Kuldeep Kumar Jain said, “The starting of full operations on the Purple Line has reduced the congestion at KR Puram junction to some extent. However, we will be able to assess the impact of the full metro operations on the traffic pattern only after a week.”
Meanwhile, the Metro’s Purple Line on October 9 recorded 2,89,105 ridership, of which 61,179 were between Baiyappanahalli and Whitefield. Before the KR Puram-Baiyappanahalli section was connected, the average daily ridership to Whitefield used to be 28,000.
