According to the TomTom Traffic Index, Bangalore has the World’s worst traffic. It would be impossible to avoid traffic in a city. But Bangalore, the 27th most populated city in the world, has the worst traffic? Before getting into how the traffic is a problem we need to understand this. Bangalore was designed to be a military cantonment town and not a metropolitan city. Changing the structure of an entire town with inhabitants is not going to be smooth.
The two main explanations how the Garden City of India with parks and lakes got to this!
Migration to the city
We are the core reason for traffic, the human population is equivalent to car population now. At the beginning of the 21st century, the population was 6,537,124. Today the city has a population of 12,765,000 and the city’s infrastructure is unable to cope with the population explosion.
Large-scale migration to Bengaluru for a better living began in the ’50s when the government started funding heavily on education and employment. Also, currently because of the large-scale construction in the city we see more workers coming in from the rural areas to the city. The favorable climate condition of Bangalore also attracts many to settle in the city.
And the large-scale construction of metros and roads is currently adding to the traffic congestion.
Growth of IT sector and other companies
During the 1980s the IT sector started to establish after the Infosys headquarters shifted to Bangalore from Pune and WIPRO set up their IT sector. Gradually, many companies began setting up in the city, till today we get to see many startup companies coming up.
The flourishing IT sector requires manpower. And many young minds from the country started to move to Bangalore for a better living and income.
With the rise of IT sectors and companies, there is an increase in income and better living conditions. Many young people now have the finances to buy a car. Which again leads to more cars and traffic.
Today, Bangalore gives employment to over 3.9 million people and as mentioned before, because of population explosion and improper infrastructures like poor road conditions and connectivity, lack of public transport the city faces long rush hours and traffic jams.
The huge number of cars does not help in the traffic. Now, owning a car is like a trend, or having a car determines your success. It is funny how a person even with so much education can only think about the day they will own a car instead of thinking about the long-term effect it can have on the planet.
Why do we encourage carpool for daily commute?
We understand that many people are not comfortable with public transport especially with Covid and taking a cab to work every day can be expensive.
Carpooling creates a commute bubble with a known set of people in the community and it helps in reducing your contact with strangers, like in public transport.
And if you already have a car, forget about the fuel price but since it’s not a single-seater car, why not share the empty seats with someone else? Carpool alone can not solve the traffic problem in Bangalore nor carpooling once a month will help. But carpooling daily can really have an impact on the parking spaces, traffic, and the environment as well.
So share or take a ride with friends, colleagues, and neighbors.
Quick Ride’s mission
Quick Ride’s mission is to remove 1 million cars from the road daily.
We would like to encourage you to carpool daily and help out each other as traffic does not affect only one person but it can also affect how a city can function daily.
Only two factors have been mentioned why we think are the core reason for the traffic congestion in Bangalore. We would like to hear from you as well. Please feel free to add more points that contribute to traffic in Bangalore.
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