BENGALURU: Residents and motorists travelling between Chandapura and Attibele along Bengaluru-Hosur highway (NH-44) have raised concerns over increasing accidents on the stretch. They are now demanding that NHAI (National Highways Authority of India) provide grade separators between Chandapura and Attibele towns for crossings to reduce accidents.
“Bengaluru-Hosur Road is one of the busiest highways in the state. Though this is a tolled highway, there is no infrastructure to segregate high-speed highway traffic and local traffic between Chandapura and Attibele towns,” said Shashidhar Reddy, a regular road user.
“This area is fully developed with major industrial and residential hubs. Currently, local vehicular traffic is interrupting high-speed highway traffic, leading to accidents and all the crossings are black spots as per police records,” he added.
According to residents, initially, six median crossings were provided by the NHAI between Chandapura and Attibele. “But many of these have been closed due to the high number of accidents. But lack of alternative arrangements is causing severe inconvenience to local vehicular traffic and impacting overall development of the area,” said Murali R, a resident of Hale Chandapura.
Between May 2016 and November 2019, 33 accidents (including 24 deaths and 30 injuries) were reported in the area. “The major accident-prone spots in this section are: Hale Chandapura, Thirumagondanahalli/ Neraluru, Balagaranahalli and Attibele Industrial area. Police have already marked Thirumagondanahalli and Attibele Industrial area locations as major black spots, but there are no safe U-turns for local traffic,” said Murali.
“In 2012, NHAI closed some U-turns and raised the height of medians without making any alternative arrangements and accidents have gone up since then. NHAI is planning a new highway (NH-844) starting from Neraluru to Dharmapuri in Tamil Nadu, but there have been no consultations or planning for cross over of local traffic along the highway,” said Murali.
Many motorists said farmers and livestock too are suffering heavily due to absence of safe crossing. Narayana Reddy, a Neraluru resident, said: “After several complaints, NHAI constructed few FoBs (foot-over-bridges) at a few places, but they are very inconvenient for elderly people and farmers. Also, there is no way for livestock to cross the NH through FoBs. This has resulted in people moving away from animal husbandry; data shows significant reduction in milk production,” he said.
In Neralur Milk Producers’ Cooperative Society (MPCS), for instance, milk production reduced from 4.3 lakh litre in 2010-2011 to 3.3 lakh litre in 2018-2019, Similarly, milk production in Thirumagondanahalli MPCS dropped from 3.6 lakh litre in 2010-2011 to 2.7 lakh litre in 2018-2019.
The Union road transport and highways ministry had earlier stated that all black spots on highways would be removed by June 2021, but it missed the deadline.
