• Signal turns red fast, traffic piles up; two wide roads on either side

• Road under Railway bridge very narrow

Mysore: The huge density of traffic at the Railway Under Bridge (RUB) on New Kantharaj Urs Road near KG Koppal is causing regular traffic jams and as a result the commuters are facing lot of problems.

This under bridge leads to several important layouts and hence the vehicular movement is very high. Even though the roads leading to the under bridge from all the four directions are fairly wide, the problem is because of the narrowness of the road right under the bridge that is causing all the nuisance.

There is also a traffic signal here and whenever the signal turns red the vehicles pile up on all four sides. By the time about four or five vehicles pass the traffic light turns red again and this is because of the narrow gap that the heavy vehicles have to negotiate.

The vehicles that includes KSRTC city buses, lorries and other big vehicles coming from Apollo Hospital side line up at the under bridge and so also the vehicles coming from Law Courts side and from Ballal Circle side. The result is there is complete chaos most of the times at this under bridge junction.

The city is expanding as more and more new layouts are coming up. Even as the population increases the number of vehicles also goes up. Some of the extensions on the other side of under bridge passing through KG Koppal include Kuvempunagar, Ramakrishnanagar, Nimishamba Layout, Srirampura, Vivekanandanagar, Janata Nagar, Aishwaryanagar, Arvindanagar, Sharadadevinagar, Bogadi and a few other layouts.

All those who come from the City Bus Stand or Railway Station have to pass through New Kantharaj Urs Road and drive through the under bridge near KG Koppal. There are several educational institutions, hospitals and government offices and all this shows that the traffic is very heavy. But the road is so narrow that traffic jams are bound to occur.

There are instances of ambulance being stuck and hence the Police or the Home Guard who is posted here have tried to clear the traffic to make way for the ambulance a couple of times.

Who is responsible?: Both the South Western Railway and the Mysuru City Corporation (MCC) should join hands to solve this problem. Though the Railway under bridge comes under the MCC, it has to take permission from the Railways to take up any work.

Hence, there should be a joint inspection from the officials of both the department to understand the severity of the problem and only after weighing all the pros and cons should a suitable decision taken that will mitigate the problems.

The concerned and enlightened citizens have urged both the departments to come forward and take steps to see that citizens are not caught up in frequent traffic jams when there could be solutions to make their lives easy and comfortable.  

The problem here is not recent. When the present MLA L. Nagendra was the Corporator, he had taken steps to widen the narrow KG Koppal Road (New Kantharaj Urs Road) into a wide four lane road. If the road under the Railway Bridge also had been widened then itself this problem would not have been there. However, when the people’s representatives and the bureaucrats lack vision then it looks like there are no solutions to such problems. I wonder how much longer people have to bear with traffic jams.

—N. Dhruvaraj, ex- Corporator