Bengaluru’s ORR tech corridor traffic woes: Police tell IT firms to start pay-and-park

To tackle the issue of traffic jams on the city’s Outer Ring Road (ORR), the Bengaluru Traffic Police (BTP) have asked large tech parks and private companies to introduce a pay-and-park system on their premises, a media report said on Saturday (November 15).

Bengaluru’s police officers, who are working on this plan, told Deccan Herald that discouraging employees from using their personal vehicles would result in easing traffic congestion in the tech corridor by 30 per cent.

What police said

The Karnataka government plans to collaborate with the Bengaluru Metropolitan Transport Corporation (BMTC) and other state transport bodies to create shared transport or bus pooling services for IT companies. The goal is to design bus routes based on employees’ common commuting patterns, encouraging them to use shared transport instead of personal vehicles, thereby reducing traffic and congestion, the report said.

Sahil Bagla, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Traffic, East), was quoted in the report as saying, “Mainly in the mornings, I have seen a lot of single drivers on the ORR. So as to mitigate the congestion, we suggested the idea to charge a parking fee on an experimental basis, as some might shift to public transport. They can also do voluntary, non-commercial carpooling. Four or five employees living in the same place can pool in.”

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Traffic woes and bad road conditions on the ORR stretch have been in the news in recent times, with a company stating that it would relocate its office.

A city-based logistics tech company, BlackBuck, in September, decided to relocate its office elsewhere from ORR.

The firm’s decision has sparked discussions in the IT-BT sector, with several IT industry stalwarts, including Mohandas Pai and Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw, expressing their dissatisfaction with the government’s poor infrastructure management.

Also in September, Karnataka Chief Minister Siddaramaiah had sought Wipro’s help to address the traffic congestion on ORR and wrote a letter to the IT giant’s founder Azim Premji.

Siddaramaiah urged Premji to consider allowing limited vehicular movement through the company’s campus, subject to mutually agreed terms.

However, Premji turned down Siddaramaiah’s request, saying, “The problem's complexity, stemming from multiple factors, suggests that there is unlikely to be a single point solution or a silver bullet to resolve it. To this end, we believe the most effective path forward is to commission a comprehensive, scientific study led by an entity with world-class expertise in urban transport management.”