Bengaluru traffic: What’s really causing the bottleneck

In 2024, the Karnataka government proposed major transport infrastructure projects in Bengaluru that include a six-lane, 40-km twin underground tunnel, road widening work and elevated corridors. The work on the twin tunnel alone is pegged at Rs 40,000 crore of the total project cost of Rs 54,964 crore, according to the agency preparing the feasibility report for Bengaluru’s civic body.The civic body has also proposed a Rs 500-crore Skydeck as a tourism project.

Citizens, activists, geologists and urban planners said these projects are likely to cause ecological damage and worsen Bengaluru’s chronic traffic problems.

There is overwhelming evidence that road widening, tunnels and flyovers offer temporary relief and benefit private vehicles but infrastructure projects such as these continue to dominate the urban landscape. What does this say about the state of transport governance in Bengaluru?

Three key issues are at the heart of this: fragmented authority over transport decisions, limited opportunities for inputs from the public and experts, and opaque governance. Together, these allow political, business and real estate interests to drive megaprojects with little accountability.

The result is a fundamentally broken system that fuels a parallel network of vested interests that prioritises the few over the many while persistently ignoring Bengaluru’s most pressing problems.

Overlapping agencies, limited local authority

Bengaluru’s transport planning suffers from…

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