Commuters embrace KBR one-way, wonder about the need for flyovers

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Traffic along the KBR one-way. File | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

From the sidelines of the busy junction where Road No.82 meets Road No. 92, one can see a steady stream of vehicles merge from both ways, and proceed towards the Jubilee Hills Checkpost and beyond, towards the Road No. 45.

Thousands of vehicles — most of them cars and a few bikes, punctuated by an occasional city bus — cross the junction every hour during the morning and evening peaks rush hours.

At about 6 p.m. on a working day, the junction is full, but not packed. Vehicles continue to move, though at a moderate speed, while the Hyderabad Traffic Police, from an elevated post on the Film Nagar side, issue directions using a megaphone.

“Since the one-way was introduced on August 18, the commute has been hassle-free. Before the one-way, it would take half an hour for me to cover the road from the Cancer Hospital to Road No.45. Now it takes five minutes,” says Mohammed Shaheer Zaman, a regular commuter on this road.

The traffic police have imposed one-way traffic movement on the road around the KBR National Park to facilitate the construction of grade separators as part of the Hyderabad City Innovative and Transformative Infrastructure (H-CITI) project. Work has begun for the construction of a total of seven flyovers and seven underpasses at a cost of over ₹1000 crore, even while a Public Interest Litigation is pending in the Supreme Court with regard to the fixation of Eco Sensitive Zone around the park.

While the first day of one-way was chaotic, the travel has become surprisingly smoother as the commuters got accustomed to the directions. The two bottlenecks on the route were the ongoing H-CITI works, for which huge trenches were dug up in the middle of the road, and the locations where the vehicles criss-cross in order to reach the destination on the other side.

Traffic along the KBR highway. File | Photo Credit: Special arrangement

“The improvement in the traffic flow is astonishing and phenomenal. It has become so smooth without any change in the erstwhile road systems. The only change has been in reorienting the vehicle flow itself. It flies in the face of the government’s insistence upon the project involving time, money and frustrated commuters,” says Aasheesh Pittie, a bird and nature enthusiast.

The route is shown entirely blue on Google Maps most of the day, indicating free flow of traffic. During peak hours, blue is replaced by orange only at the locations where H-CITI work is ongoing. One more advantage of one-way is the removal of frequent U-turns, which slowed down the traffic.

“Traffic now flows smoother than before. There is no need for flyovers if one way is made permanent, but public will complain about the longer distance and fuel consumption,” said a traffic cop manning the vehicles on the road, on the condition of anonymity.

“I had proposed one-way back in 2017 to protect the trees on the KBR walkway, which were marked for felling down.