Ease traffic around Mysore Palace

Sir,

Of late with increasing tourists to Mysuru, the traffic on City-Nanjangud Road in front of Palace – Exhibition faces a lot of traffic jams. One of the main contributors of the traffic is our city buses. There are around 500 city buses in Mysuru. All of them enter City Bus Stand (CBS) and make at least one round around this busy Palace – Exhibition gate on Nanjangud Road.

This also adds to 2kms for the city buses which consumes 1.5 litre of diesel in Volvos and around half to 1 litre of diesel in normal buses along with emission and congestion and waste of time of passengers. A bus passing from South-West to North-East of Mysuru has to traverse this twice, like Route No 80. Each bus makes around 10 trips contributing to 5,000 plus trips of city buses itself around the Palace. Two options to solve this problem:

1. To start circular bus system like in Bengaluru without touching CBS as suggested in this column earlier.
2. To start a Service Road between Sanskrit Pathashala Circle to CBS entrance with bus only plying on the Service Road in the reverse direction. Similarly, start a Service Road between CBS near Hopcoms entrance opposite to Garuda Mall till Palace Circle allowing only buses to ply.

Buses from Pathashala to CBS will go in extreme right service road in a dedicated lane. Buses from CBS to Pathashala will take normal route as is with mixed traffic. Similarly buses from CBS towards Northern-Eastern Mysuru will take Service Road in a dedicated bus lane. Buses towards CBS will take the normal path as usual. This might need a bit of widening of around 5-10 feet if required in these stretches. This will save precious fossil fuel of buses, reduce operating cost, save passenger time and increase frequency as well. It will avoid 5,000-plus buses plying on the busy Ooty Road. Similar arrangement is done in Bengaluru between Sampige Road Entrance and Majestic with buses from Vijayanagar – Malleswaram side taking contraflow side.

– Vasanth Ramu, Mysuru, 16.3.2018

You can also mail us your views, opinions, and stories to voice@starofmysore.com