Fresh flaws flagged in project report for Bengaluru’s tunnel roads

Bengaluru: A slew of fresh inconsistencies has surfaced in the detailed project report (DPR) for the proposed tunnel roads between Hebbal (Esteem Mall junction) and Silk Board junction — raising pointed questions about the credibility of the project’s foundational data.Critics and activists allege that the DPR, prepared for a tunnel slated to run 30 metres below ground level and cut travel time from one hour to about 20–25 minutes, leans heavily on outdated studies, unverifiable assumptions, and statistically implausible traffic projections.One of the most glaring examples is found in Table 93: Traffic for the year 2027-28, which shows an identical number of vehicles — 2,927 — travelling in both directions along the corridor.

From Hebbal to Silk Board and back, the numbers match perfectly. Mobility experts call this a statistical impossibility in any real-world urban setting, and an obvious sign of a “copy-paste” error.“Except for changing the table’s order, every other data on it is the same,” said Rajkumar Duggar, founder of Citizens for Citizens, calling out the lack of scrutiny in the report’s traffic estimates.Urban transport expert Satya Arikutharam was more scathing: “BBMP’s approach to transport modelling is fundamentally flawed.

The DPR selectively pulls elements from older studies, uses unverified assumptions, and produces outputs that are entirely outlandish.”Indeed, Volume I of the DPR points to corridors such as Race Course Road to Hosur Main Road (via Wilson Garden) and Jayanagar to Race Course Road as the most congested in the city, each handling 20,283 vehicles. However, the tunnel corridor — from Race Course Road to Silk Board Junction — shows only 8,631 vehicles in either direction.

This is despite it being pitched as a high-demand route worthy of a multi-thousand-crore investment.“The tunnel doesn’t even serve the highest-density corridor by BBMP’s own admission,” said Arikutharam, stressing the need for accurate, present-day traffic assessments rather than backward-looking modelling. “We need real, up-to-date traffic flows, not something that’s stitched together in haste,” he added.Prof Ashish Verma, mobility expert from IISc, said: “You cannot design infrastructure by rehashing outdated reports. Mobility patterns in Bengaluru are constantly evolving. What we are seeing in this report is not data-driven planning — it is guesswork.”Amid the growing criticism, urban mobility enthusiast Prasad N urged the BBMP to make the full DPR publicly available for peer review. “If the government plans to spend thousands of crores, the public deserves transparency,” he said.“Every project on paper reduces travel time, but we need to ask: at what cost, and for whom? Without integration with buses and Metro, this tunnel could simply become another private vehicle expressway for the elite,” Prasad added.