Bengaluru’s Hebbal tunnel is a risk to groundwater and could worsen flooding, say experts
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The proposed three-lane, bidirectional tunnel road in north Bengaluru, intended to ease congestion at Hebbal Junction – a major interchange connecting the airport with the rest of the city – has run into rough weather.
At an estimated Rs 1,385 crore, the tunnel will cost about Rs 622 crore per kilometre. The tunnel’s long-term benefits in terms of easing traffic congestion are, however, unclear.
A recent analysis by the Sustainable Transportation Lab of the Indian Institute of Science points out that the tunnel is a “highly localised improvement” that “merely shifts the congestion point”, leaving bottlenecks at its entry and exit. The detailed project report or DPR shows that by 2047, the tunnel will operate at or beyond capacity in all scenarios modelled.
According to urban mobility expert Satya Arikutharam, apart from creating more chaos at these bottlenecks, the tunnel “will also worsen the local traffic, the very problem it intends to solve. Faster arrival rate at these local road intersections due to the new short tunnel capacity means quicker accumulation of traffic, queuing pile-ups and traffic jams,” he says.
Groundwater and flooding concerns
A bigger concern the citizens and environmental experts are raising is about the risks it could pose to groundwater and flooding.
The little over two-kilometre tunnel will run from the Hebbal flyover...