So you thought what is this new game ? And what do these scores mean :). Well this is the new hurdle crossing game that Karnataka has launched on the roads. Let me explain this better.
We drove down from Madikeri to Bangalore today. The road is world class and you can nearly get every cuisine in one of the many restaurants that dot the road on either side. The drive is 245 kms from Madikeri to the point where we get onto to the “NICE” road. That’s the last number 245, the distance we covered. There were 11 barricades on this trip and would have been 12 but Krishnan felt one of the barricades didn’t really slow us down and should not be counted. That’s the middle number. And hopefully by now some of you have guessed what is the 111 – it’s the number of speed breakers (some are car breakers) that we counted in this stretch !!! So nearly a speed breaker EVERY 2 Kms. That’s not all, a stretch of 6 kms at Hunsur has 12 speed breakers. Unbelievable.
I want to understand the logic behind these speed breakers. They increase the fuel consumption, they wear out the break pad, they strain the driver because some of them are unmarked and one of our friend’s car leaked oil after the bottom hit one of these small hills :(:(. I can understand speed breakers near schools, but having so many of them peppered on an international standard highway is just unacceptable.
The government builds these roads with the tax payers money, earns revenue as the taxpayer spends on fuel and the builds these speed breakers so that the car’s maintenance goes up and fuel efficiency goes down …. Warped way of improving their revenue. On a deeper level, is the government living in the 18th century ? And hindering progress ? – speed breakers on the roads and speed breakers on projects and new ideas ?? The story of the NICE road and what the Deve Gowda and his son did to derail it is well known and the Metro in Bangalore is a classic example of a super delayed project.
Dont want to ask the CM and be told “you have to bear with it” … Or worse, be banned from coming into Karnataka. :(:( Terribly sad after scoring a century !
I love this post – there’s two parts to it, Bindu. 1) It’s corruption – the road construction crews have a nexus with local adinistration – they make the speed breakers, then they remove it, then some new official comes along and the money goes to some other crew to put up a new set – in my little colony in Gurgaon – we have so many that I’ve lost count – they come down, they go up
The second part is that the car driver is not a priority – it’s about non car drivers ability to cross a road – how else can you explain the the cuts in road dividers for people to cross a busy highway