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“It will get actually slender and chaotic throughout peak hours. What ought to take 10 to 12 minutes usually stretches to twenty minutes. Truthfully, it feels just like the street wasn’t designed with present site visitors in thoughts,” mentioned Steve Abraham, a personal worker who travels from Sainikpuri to Gachibowli.
Anjali Rao, a tech skilled from Miyapur mentioned, “It’s irritating, particularly close to the Radisson stretch. The merging is messy, and nobody appears to know who has the proper manner. I exploit this route each day to succeed in my workplace in Kondapur, and what ought to be a fast drive is now a crawl.”
A important bottleneck has shaped close to the Radisson Resort, the place three lanes of site visitors from the flyover and two from the Gachibowli junction beneath, are squeezed right into a street barely broad sufficient for 3 lanes. “Earlier, autos waited at a sign and moved in batches. Now, there’s no stoppage, all of the autos transfer on the similar time and it will get gridlocked,” mentioned a Gachibowli site visitors police officer. He added that congestion peaks between 4 p.m. and eight p.m., usually inflicting backups of 40–50 metres or extra on the flyover.
In a brief repair, the site visitors police lately made provisions to redirect one lane of site visitors and merge it past Radisson Resort onto a four-lane street. “We’ve been doing this for the previous few days, and it has introduced down common ready occasions from 20 minutes to about 6–7 minutes, whereas journey time stays virtually the identical,” the officer mentioned.
One other adjustment concerned transferring a U-turn close to the touchdown of the flyover round 150 metres beneath the construction. “Earlier it was leading to congestion with an elevated danger of accidents,” the officer added. A proposal to widen the street close to the Radisson stretch, including about two extra lanes, can be into consideration.
But, specialists argue that the problems transcend short-term fixes. City mobility professional Prashanth Bachu mentioned town’s strategy to street design is flawed. “We maintain increasing lanes arbitrarily, however they will’t be expanded infinitely. All site visitors ultimately converges on the narrowest level or different arms of that street,” he mentioned.
In accordance with Bachu, every lane, flyover or in any other case, can carry about 1,200 car-equivalents per hour. “It’s possible you’ll save one or two minutes on a flyover, however you’ll lose extra time on the subsequent junction, which will get choked by the unregulated stream. We’re now seeing that the time saving advantages of latest flyovers are nullified inside two to 6 months. A decade in the past, it took at the least two years for that to occur,” he mentioned.
There may be additionally a shift in site visitors patterns, largely pushed by navigation instruments. Extra autos from the ORR are actually routed through the broader PJR flyover, bypassing the narrower Shilpa flyover. “Commuters headed in the direction of Hafeezpet, Kukatpally, KPHB Colony, Nizampet, and even Madinaguda, who earlier took the Shilpa Format flyover, are being directed to take this route. Because of this, site visitors quantity right here has surged,” the site visitors official defined. After the PJR flyover, commuters take the Kothaguda flyover earlier than turning off close to Yashoda Hospital.
A part of the reason being design: the PJR flyover begins barely sooner than the Shilpa flyover, by round 100 metres, and navigation apps immediate customers to take the previous.
Commuters and specialists have additionally flagged the absence of clear signage, including to confusion and delays, particularly for first-time customers. Regardless of the deployment of site visitors personnel throughout peak hours, the quantity of autos continues to pressure the infrastructure.
Whereas the police anticipate the proposed road-widening mission close to Radisson might provide some reduction, specialists warn that until there’s a shift in planning philosophy, specializing in managing demand somewhat than merely increasing provide, new flyovers will proceed to ship diminishing returns.
Within the interim, Bachu burdened the necessity for extra pedestrian crossing indicators at common intervals. “By doing so, you’re holding the site visitors at periodical intervals, thereby avoiding heavy site visitors accumulation at one spot. This can even assist pedestrians, and motorists who must go to the other aspect, to cross the street simply,” he mentioned.
Printed – July 06, 2025 07:38 am IST
