After a report commissioned by Uber and Boston Consulting Group ranked Bengaluru as the city with the highest social cost of traffic congestion, a report by MoveInSync Technology Solutions finds that the quality of life and productivity of Bengaluru has been significantly compromised as the office travel time has increased by 6% as compared to last year.
This indicates that on an average, Bengalureans spend about 1 hour one-way to commute an average of 16 kms in most of the areas.
According to the report, which is a study based on 11 lakh shared rides between January and March 2018, the major bottleneck areas are ORR Ecoworld, ORR Doddanekundi and Whitefield areas, becoming the worst for office commute. ORR Prestige TechPark, which was the least bottleneck area in 2017 has now become the sixth most congested areas.
Sarjapur Road, Bannerghatta Road, EGL Domlur and ORR Manyata Techpark are areas with lesser congestion. However, the travel time still remains at around 46-48 minutes.
“The never-ending infrastructure development projects in the city have made commuting on the road a nightmare. Over the years, as multiple plans have been implemented to improve the traffic situation in the city - flyovers and underpasses were constructed or under construction (as part of the signal-free corridors), roads widened- however, the difference has been negligible. The added white-topping work, arterial roads undertaken in election year has only added to the traffic woes of Bengaluru,” the report states.
With over nine crore vehicles being added in the past 15 months, the report suggests that there need to be better roads to accommodate the same.
“The MoveInSync – Bengaluru city office commute report consolidates the finding that the quality of life and productivity in the Silicon valley of India – Bengaluru City. The government should work with companies to ensure that they can address the traffic related woes of IT city,” the report suggests.