Kalpana SP has been working at an IT company near Vydehi Hospital, near ITPL, for the past two months. Although she takes a bus from Vydehi to BEML every day, she has never stepped into the Traffic and Transit Management Centre (TTMC) building near the hospital.
Many commuters board buses from the same point but never use the TTMC as it does not serve the purpose it was built for.
“The TTMC is of no use to us at all,” said Ramesh, who works with Accenture. “It does not have connectivity to any of the major IT parks nearby and we are forced to wait for a bus outside the TTMC,” he added.
While the failure of most other TTMCs in the city is that they do not act as transit centres but as mere bus stops, the ITPL TTMC, has the potential to become a transit centre, provided it is connected to nearby areas.
Rithesh Swamy from praja.in said: “The TTMC has buses coming from Kundanahalli towards Whitefield. But these are the only buses that ply through it. The buses from TTMC connect to ITPL only, even though there are a number of other tech parks such as Brigade Millenium and Bhoruka Tech Park nearby. Areas such as Garudacharpalya, Varthur and KR Puram are not covered,” he said.
Even buses heading towards the airport do not stop at the TTMC. Considering that the TTMC does not host buses plying towards these areas, people wait at a traffic signal near the hospital to board buses going towards KR Puram. With no designated bus stop at the junction, the buses often stop at the signal, causing traffic jams.
The spacious parking at the TTMC, too, is not utilised as just a handful of cars are parked in the space built to hold 100 vehicles. “With not enough connections to different places and adequate parking facilities in both the tech parks as well as the roads, why will people park at the TTMC?” asked Rithesh.
With the current practices, the TTMC’s main objective is to provide eateries to techies who come near the area. Banquet halls, a vegetarian eatery and a non-vegetarian restaurant are expected to be built on various floors of the TTMC.
