Source : INDIA TODAY NEWS
Bengaluru’s traffic problem is no longer simply about too many cars on the road during office hours. The city’s population, built-up area and vehicle count have grown at a pace that its road network has struggled to match, leaving the technology capital battling some of the world’s worst congestion.
At the India Today Karnataka Summit 2026, Krishna Byre Gowda, Minister for Greater Bengaluru Development, offered a blunt explanation for why traffic has become such a persistent problem, and why he believes Bengaluru will need much more than tunnels or flyovers to fix it.
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The scale of the problem is striking. Bengaluru now has around 1.5 crore vehicles, according to Gowda, almost one vehicle for every person in the city.
But the bigger problem, he argued, is the amount of road space available to accommodate them.
“Road capacity is limited,” Gowda said, acknowledging that Bengaluru had failed to ensure adequate road capacity as the city expanded over the past 25 years.
His solution is therefore not one big infrastructure project. He says Bengaluru needs a combination of more buses, a larger metro network, suburban rail, elevated roads and tunnels, backed by an estimated investment of around Rs 3 lakh crore.
BENGALURU GREW FAST. ITS ROADS DID NOT
To understand why traffic is so difficult to solve, Gowda says it is important to look at how quickly Bengaluru has expanded.
According to data cited by the minister, Bengaluru’s continuous urban growth has increased by around 260% over the last 25 years.
The city’s population growth has also outpaced several other major Indian cities. Gowda cited an annual population growth rate of around 3.2% over the last two decades, compared with 2.1% for Delhi, 1.5% for Hyderabad, 1.5% for Chennai, 0.95% for Mumbai and 0.8% for Kolkata.
“Bengaluru is 3.3 times faster than Bombay,” he said, arguing that the city is effectively in a league of its own when it comes to the pace of growth.
Its built-up area has expanded at around 2.5%, according to the data he cited, again higher than Mumbai’s 1%, Delhi’s 1.5%, Kolkata’s 1.3% and Hyderabad’s 1.9%.
But the number that stands out is vehicle growth.
Bengaluru’s vehicle growth rate, according to Gowda, is 9.6%, compared with 7.2% in Mumbai, 6.4% in Delhi, 6.3% in Hyderabad and 2.2% in Kolkata.
That means the number of vehicles has been rising far faster than the city’s ability to accommodate them.
1.5 CRORE VEHICLES, BUT WHERE ARE THEY SUPPOSED TO GO?
Bengaluru currently has about 1.5 crore vehicles, Gowda said.
That translates to roughly one vehicle for every person.
The comparison with other major cities is stark. According to figures cited by the minister, Delhi has about one vehicle for every two people, while Mumbai has roughly one vehicle for every three people.
This creates a very different pressure on the road network.
And Bengaluru’s roads are already carrying a much higher vehicle load for every square kilometre of road capacity.
Gowda cited the following comparison:
Delhi: 50,000-60,000 vehicles per sq km of road capacity
Mumbai: 60,000-70,000
Bengaluru: 80,000-90,000
“That’s why you have one of the worst congestions in Bangalore,” he said.
In other words, the problem is not merely that Bengaluru has a lot of vehicles. It is that those vehicles are being squeezed into a road network with relatively limited capacity.
WHY SOME PARTS OF BENGALURU ARE WORSE THAN OTHERS
Gowda used the difference between older planned neighbourhoods and newer parts of the city to explain this problem.
He cited Jayanagar as an example of an area where road infrastructure was planned alongside development.
In Jayanagar, he said, around 23% of the land in a 100-acre area is reserved for roads.
But parts of eastern Bengaluru developed very differently.
According to Gowda, the eastern part of the city has around 8% of its area devoted to roads.
The result is visible in the complaints coming from these areas.
Gowda said eastern Bengaluru accounts for around 75% of complaints, despite making up only around 20% of the city’s land area.
The reason, he argued, is the difference in road capacity.
“Jainagar has 23% roads, eastern Bengaluru has 8% roads,” he said.
His broader criticism is directed at the way Bengaluru expanded over the last 25 years, with unregulated growth and unauthorised developments leaving newer parts of the city without the same road infrastructure available in older planned neighbourhoods.
He acknowledged that this is not a problem created by one government.
“Last 25 years, we didn’t ensure, I admit myself, everybody, we didn’t ensure that there was adequate road capacity in Bengaluru,” Gowda said.
BENGALURU’S ECONOMIC SUCCESS IS ALSO ADDING PRESSURE
There is another side to the traffic story.
Bengaluru continues to be one of India’s biggest economic engines, and that growth brings more offices, workers, homes and vehicles.
Gowda cited office-space consumption as one indicator of the city’s economic strength.
According to the figures he presented, Bengaluru accounts for 36% of the office space consumed across the country.
Hyderabad is next at 23%, followed by Mumbai at 12%, Delhi at 11%, Pune at 9%, Chennai at 7% and Kolkata at 2%.
That means Bengaluru is not struggling because economic activity has disappeared. Quite the opposite.
The city is attracting businesses and workers at a scale that is putting enormous pressure on its infrastructure.
The traffic problem is therefore also a consequence of Bengaluru’s success.
HOW BAD IS BENGALURU TRAFFIC?
The numbers cited during the session show why traffic has become such a defining part of life in the city.
TomTom’s 2025 traffic data was cited as showing 74% congestion in Bengaluru, making it the second-worst congested city in the world.
The same data cited during the conversation showed that commuters lose around 168 hours every year in rush-hour traffic.
The average speed during rush hour was cited at only 13 kmph.
A journey of just 10 km can take around 40 to 45 minutes, according to the figures discussed at the summit.
For Bengaluru residents, that means a short-distance commute can consume a significant portion of the working day.
But the minister’s argument is that simply adding one more flyover or tunnel cannot solve a problem of this scale.
WILL TUNNELS ACTUALLY SOLVE BENGALURU TRAFFIC?
This is where the debate over Bengaluru’s proposed tunnel roads comes in.
The tunnel project has been criticised on the grounds that if flyovers have not eliminated congestion, putting roads underground may not solve the underlying problem either.
Gowda’s response is that this assumes tunnels are being presented as the only solution.
They are not, he argues.
“Mass transit is the solution,” he said.
But he also believes mass transit by itself cannot solve the problem because Bengaluru already has around 1.5 crore vehicles.
That is why the government’s approach involves expanding public transport while simultaneously creating additional road capacity.
The first part of the plan is buses.
Bengaluru currently has around 7,000 BMTC buses, which Gowda said is the largest bus fleet in the country.
The government is proposing to add another 4,500 buses, with the majority expected to be electric buses.
The reason buses are central to the plan is simple: they are already carrying far more people than the metro.
According to figures cited by Gowda, around 45 lakh people travel by bus every day in Bengaluru.
The metro, by comparison, carries around 10 lakh passengers a day.
“Bus is the nearest mass transit available to people,” Gowda said.
Buses also offer better last-mile connectivity than metro systems, making them crucial for getting people from their homes to major transit corridors and back.
METRO EXPANSION ONE PART OF SOLUTION
The second major component is the metro network.
Bengaluru currently has around 96 km of metro network, according to Gowda.
The government’s immediate goal is to take that to 170 km, with a longer-term ambition of reaching 250 km.
Gowda was unequivocal about the government’s commitment to metro expansion.
“Our government is absolutely committed to expansion of metro,” he said.
The idea is to move more commuters through high-capacity public transport rather than having every additional worker depend on a private vehicle.
The government is also counting on suburban rail as another mass-transit option.
Gowda said Rs 23,000 crore is being invested in suburban rail, with a target of completing 148 km by 2030.
By that point, the government hopes Bengaluru will have close to 170 km of metro and 148 km of suburban rail.
Together with the expanded bus network, that would significantly increase the number of people who can travel through the city without using private vehicles.
But there is a catch. Even all of this will not make the existing vehicles disappear. And that brings the government back to roads.
Gowda’s argument is that Bengaluru cannot simply choose between public transport and roads.
It needs both.
Even if millions more people move to buses, metro and suburban rail, there will still be a huge number of vehicles on the roads.
The city already has around 1.5 crore vehicles. So additional road capacity is required, he said.
But conventional road widening comes with a major problem: land.
“Can you go break homes, throw families on the road and widen the roads? It’s not possible,” Gowda said.
The issue, according to him, is not just the financial cost of acquiring land. It is the human cost of breaking up established neighbourhoods and displacing families.
That is why he does not see conventional road widening as a scalable solution for Bengaluru.
120 KM OF ELEVATED ROADS AND 40 KM OF TUNNELS
The alternative is to create road capacity without requiring large-scale demolition at ground level.
The government is therefore looking at around 120 km of elevated roads and 40 km of tunnels.
This is the part that Gowda says needs to be understood in the context of the entire plan. The tunnels are not supposed to replace buses.
The elevated roads are not supposed to replace the metro. And the metro is not supposed to replace suburban rail.
Instead, the government’s proposal is to build all of them together.
“Tunnel, elevated road in the context of Bengaluru’s legacy problems, in the context of a set of solutions we are proposing,” Gowda said.
The overall package — metro, suburban rail, buses, elevated roads and tunnels — would involve an investment of around Rs 3 lakh crore, according to the minister.
CAN BENGALURU BUILD ITS WAY OUT OF A TRAFFIC CRISIS?
That is ultimately the big question.
Bengaluru’s traffic problem has been building for decades. The city has grown rapidly, its vehicle population has exploded and large parts of its newer urban development have not had the road density of older planned neighbourhoods.
The result is a city where 1.5 crore vehicles are competing for limited road space, while commuters lose hours every year to congestion.
But the government’s proposed answer is not simply to build more roads.
It is to try to change how people move around the city while also accepting that roads will continue to be needed.
More buses could move millions of commuters at relatively low cost. Metro and suburban rail could provide high-capacity corridors. Elevated roads and tunnels could add road capacity without requiring the kind of land acquisition and displacement involved in conventional widening.
Whether that combination will finally make Bengaluru’s traffic manageable remains to be seen.
But Gowda’s central argument is clear: there is no single infrastructure fix for a city that has grown this quickly.
Bengaluru needs more ways to move people, more road capacity for the vehicles that remain and, perhaps most importantly, better planning to ensure that the city’s next phase of growth does not repeat the infrastructure gaps of the past 25 years.
As Gowda put it, “road capacity is limited”.
The challenge now is whether Bengaluru can expand that capacity quickly enough to catch up with a city that is still growing.
– Ends
SOURCE :- TIMES OF INDIA
