Decades of flyovers, underpasses, and infrastructure quick fixes have done little to ease Bengaluru’s traffic gridlock, mostly shifting long queues of vehicles from one junction to another. Yet the city, where people plan travel by time rather than distance, is being offered another silver bullet — a network of 40 km of twin tunnel roads crisscrossing the city connecting north to south and east to west — costing tens of thousands of crores, with a promise to save time and reduce Bengaluru’s chronic traffic problems.
In Bengaluru, public transport remains overcrowded, walking and cycling are unsafe, and the broader question of how to move more people, not just more cars, remains unanswered.
However, instead of letting the city’s Comprehensive Mobility Plan (CMP) and the Revised Master Plan – 2041, which are in the works now, guide the project, the twin tunnel project was decided first, with the plan and foundational transport logic appearing to play catch-up to political deadlines.
“The project has been conceived as a solution to congestion, but nobody has a clear answer about how exactly it can be achieved. The proposed stretch runs between Hebbal and Silk Board, while Bengaluru’s road network is dozens of times larger. How will this one stretch reduce congestion at Jayanagar, Outer Ring Road (ORR), or Whitefield?”Dattatraya T. DevareEnvironmental activist
The project aims to tackle the city’s chronic traffic congestion through two main corridors: a north-south link between Hebbal and Silk Board (16.74 km) and an east-west corridor connecting K.R. Puram to Nayandahalli (22 km). It has progressed rapidly from its announcement in early 2024 to Cabinet approval, followed by the preparation of the detailed project report for the north-south corridor.
This rapid progress, experts point out, stands in contrast to other major public transport initiatives in the city, such as Namma Metro and the Bengaluru Suburban Rail Project, both of which have faced long delays. It is a familiar pattern where speed is mistaken for progress, car ownership for prosperity, and planning treated as paperwork to be filled in later, they say.
Urban mobility is a complex, multi-layered challenge
While Deputy Chief Minister D.K. Shivakumar champions the tunnel road as Bengaluru’s ultimate solution to daily gridlock, insisting that ‘time is everything’ and no one should waste it, experts caution that urban mobility is a complex, multi-layered challenge, far more than just shaving minutes off commutes or building roads that allow faster commute.
Professor Ashish Verma from the IISc Sustainable Transportation Lab (IST Lab), Indian Institute of Science (IISc), argues that the city’s transport crisis is far more complex than the political rhetoric that reduces it to saving minutes and speeding cars. “The argument about cutting time and decongesting is precisely where all political and technical understanding goes wrong. Such claims that the tunnel will save people’s time oversimplifies urban mobility, which is in reality a deeply interconnected system”.
“A single lane of road can move only about 1,800 passengers per hour per direction. By contrast, the same tunnel, if used for a metro, could carry up to 69,000 passengers per hour per direction — nearly 40 times more people,” prof. Verma added.
Tunnel first, planning later
Moreover, the larger question is how the tunnel road fits into Bengaluru’s master plan and long-term mobility vision. Large-scale infrastructure projects are supposed to emerge from rigorous data-based surveys, detailed transport assessments, and stakeholder consultations, reflecting how people actually move across the city, where they live, where they work, and which routes they use. Such bottom-up inputs then shape a mobility plan that balances modes of travel and sets long-term goals.
“In Bengaluru’s case, the CMP clearly states that nearly 80% of daily trips should happen through public transport, walking, or cycling. Moreover, the goal of any urban mobility system should be to maximize the movement of people and goods, not vehicles. Yet, the tunnel road does the opposite, prioritising car throughout over people,” prof. Verma added.
In such cases, planning decisions ignore these foundational surveys and frameworks, stop reflecting citizens’ mobility needs, and begin reflecting institutional convenience or political visibility instead.
Affordability, financial viability
Another critical aspect is the project’s affordability and financial viability. The detailed project report estimates a toll of ₹19.42 per km for using the tunnel. This essentially means the toll alone for a commute from Hebbal to Silk Board will be ₹325, and for a round trip the figure will be ₹650.
Mobility experts have cautioned that this is a significant cost for everyday commuters, and the government must understand whether people can realistically bear the expense.
While the tunnel road is being pitched as a solution for car owners, it won’t benefit everyone. How even all car owners can afford to shell out the toll is debatable.
“If someone is taking a cab and refuses to pay the toll, the cab driver will be forced to use the surface roads, adding to congestion,” said Rajkumar Dugar, convenor, Citizens for Citizens (C4C), adding that a similar behaviour is seen with people navigating the airport route where commuters actively avoid tolled routes, opting for alternative roads instead.
“Even the promise of reduced travel time is misleading. With tolls set high and likely to rise by the time the tunnel is ready, this project will only serve a selected group. Ordinary Bengaluru residents, who sit in traffic every day, will still be stuck on surface roads,” he argued.
User fee, not toll: B-SMILE
However, Bengaluru Smart Infrastructure Limited (B‑SMILE), the Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) set up to manage the tunnel project, insisted that the ‘toll’ should not be considered a toll in the traditional sense.
“It is a user fee levied to allow vehicles to access and use the tunnel. The toll charge has been fixed in line with guidelines from the Ministry of Road Transport and Highways (MoRTH), and the tunnel has been scientifically designed to meet all technical, structural, and safety standards,” B.S. Prahlad, Director (Technical), B-SMILE, clarified.
Conflict with mobility plan
The proposed tunnel road overlaps significantly with the planned Namma Metro Phase 3A (Red Line), raising concerns about the viability of both projects. The 37-km metro line, running from Sarjapur to Hebbal, shares nearly half its alignment with the tunnel between Silk Board and Hebbal, meaning the two projects are effectively competing for the same corridor and potentially undermining each other’s effectiveness.
That’s why projects like the tunnel, Prof. Verma said, are fundamentally counter-productive. “They diminish the use and viability of public transport, which cities should be strengthening. When you run a flyover parallel to a metro line, you are competing with your own system. You’re taking away ridership from public transport and pushing more people toward private vehicles,” he explained.
While there is no question that public transport needs to be strengthened, environmental activist Dattatraya T. Devare cautioned against framing the issue as a simple budget battle between car infrastructure and public transit.
“We cannot just take the money earmarked for this tunnel and put it into buses or the metro and expect results,” he said. While investment in public transport is undoubtedly necessary, he argued, money alone will not change commuter behaviour. To achieve that, cities must actively focus on travel demand management — ensuring reliable service frequency, effective first and last-mile connectivity, safe pedestrian access, and policies that make private vehicle-use less convenient or more expensive. “If you don’t create conditions that make public transport the default choice, people will continue to drive, even if you add hundreds of new buses. Without that behavioural shift, simply shifting funds from one mode to another achieves very little,” he said.
Even when the project is defended by citing other examples, it is crucial to understand that treating cities like highways is fundamentally flawed. Urban areas, prof. Verma said, are living, dynamic systems with multiple modes of movement with people walking, taking buses, and using cars — all interacting in complex ways. “Viewing them merely as corridors for vehicles ignores these interactions and leads to solutions that may worsen congestion and pollution rather than solve it. Highway engineering principles, designed for uninterrupted vehicle flow over long distances, cannot be directly applied to the dense, mixed-use fabric of a city. Urban mobility is much more complex,” he said.
“Every major infrastructure decision must align with a comprehensive mobility framework that prioritises walking, cycling, and public transport, not just the convenience of car owners,” he said.
Standard v/s quality of life
The larger problem, as prof. Verma points out how India confuses the standard of living with the quality of life. “You may have high purchasing power, own multiple cars, and live in an expensive apartment, but if you spend hours in traffic and breathe toxic air, what quality of life are you really enjoying? We’ve mistaken affluence for well-being”.
“People prefer to travel in their own vehicles with their families… people even hesitate to marry a boy who does not own a car”D.K ShivakumarDeputy Chief Minister, Karnataka
“In Switzerland and the Netherlands, safe cycling paths, reliable transit and policies that discourage unnecessary car use create a quality of life where people spend less time stuck in traffic and more time living…. If car ownership is being tied to marriage and status, why are examples of these cities ignored? Are people in those countries not getting married, or not proud of their cars? ”Professor Ashish VermaIISc Sustainable Transportation Lab, Indian Institute of Science
The Deputy Chief Minister has defended the proposed tunnel project in Bengaluru by invoking social expectations as much as transport logic. He argued that people prefer to travel in their own vehicles with their families and that people even hesitate to marry a boy who doesn’t own a car, suggesting that infrastructure for private vehicles is not just about mobility, but even about status and marriage prospects. The Deputy Chief Minister has, many times, also pointed to other cities like Mumbai and Delhi building tunnel works, implying that the IT capital too should keep up.
Yet, if the argument is ‘they did it so why not us’, then it invites an obvious follow‑up — why aren’t we also looking at cities that deliberately reduced car dependence rather than build more for cars? Places like Singapore, Switzerland and the Netherlands have shown that high income and good living can go hand in hand without turning every road into a car corridor.
“Singapore, for instance, has a per‐capita income above $80,000 — nearly 25 times what India has — yet around 80 % of daily trips are via public transport, walking or cycling. In Switzerland and the Netherlands, safe cycling paths, reliable transit and policies that discourage unnecessary car use create a quality of life where people spend less time stuck in traffic and more time living,” Prof. Verma pointed out.
“Therefore, if car ownership is being tied to marriage and status, why then are the examples of these high‑functioning cities ignored? Are people in those countries not getting married, or not proud of their cars? Or, is the pride here tied less to vehicle count and more to a city that works for everyone?” he asked.
Will it solve congestion?
The fundamental question, which remains still unaddressed is — will the tunnel road even solve the problem it claims to address?
Mr. Devare said, “When the project has been conceived as a solution to congestion, nobody has a clear answer about how exactly it will achieve that. The proposed stretch runs between Hebbal and Silk Board, while Bengaluru’s road network is dozens of times larger. How will this one stretch reduce congestion at Jayanagar, Outer Ring Road (ORR), or Whitefield? In the first place, it will not solve the problem it is supposed to solve”.
Mr. Devare further added that environmental concerns compound the skepticism. The deep tunnelling could disturb the city’s fragile groundwater system. “The amount of debris that will be generated is enormous. Where will it go, and how will it be transported? And even if you move faster inside the tunnel, how and when one enters — the entry and exit points — will still merge into the city’s surface roads, where congestion and pollution will only worsen”.
The project’s legal and procedural grounding also remains shaky. “Such a massive undertaking cannot go ahead without statutory approval. It has not been cleared by the Bengaluru Metropolitan Land Transport Authority (BMLTA) or referred to the Metropolitan Planning Committee, both of which are mandatory. Even the Directorate of Urban Land Transport (DULT), in its own review, found major flaws in the proposal,” he said.
Multiple Public Interest Litigations (PILs) have been filed before the High Court of Karnataka against the project and even the National Green Tribunal (NGT) is examining the project.
Bengaluru South BJP MP Tejasvi Surya, who has been the most vocal critic of the project and even submitted an alternative proposal for augmenting public transport, mainly through rail and even trams, argued for a PIL in the High Court.
