Hyderabad: There are over 400 IT and ITes companies in the city and 90 per cent of them are located in and around Madhapur, Hitec City, Kondapur and Gachibowli. About 3.5 lakh IT employees travel daily to the IT corridor of the city and the road space is not enough to take the increasing number of vehicles.
Roads in Cyberabad have not been developed in proportion to the population growth. Techies complain that all is well as long as they remain in their colonies which have good internal roads and greenery, but the moment they travel outside, they are caught up in traffic jams.
The roads are narrow and are just 40-feet wide at some stretches. Moreover bad conditions and potholes only add to the woes of motorists commuting in the IT corridor of the city.
Projects worth Rs 150crore, which involve constructing new link roads and widening several corridors, to be taken up in Cyberabad and surrounding areas by the GHMC are still on paper.
“Techies are spending nearly two hours commuting to and from their residences to their offices. This is mainly because the number of vehicles plying has increased, but the carriageway has remained the same. About five years back, it used to take 15 to 20 minutes to commute from Gachi bowli to Jubilee Hills. Today, it takes 45 minutes due to traffic congestion,” said Bipin Pendyal, secretary of IT and ITes Association of AP.
“The road from Kondapur and Botanical Garden to Old Bombay highway towards Gachibowli is not uniform. It is 40 feet wide at some stretches and 60 feet at other places. Vehicle speed on this stretch comes down to 20 kmph during peak hours,” said Shrey Gulati, a resident of Kothaguda.
Parul Nagpal, a student of NIFT said lack of traffic sense among motorists is another major problem. “The roads are in bad shape. Illiterates and educated, all are alike when it comes to throwing traffic rules to the wind. If negotiating the traffic on narrow stretches is one challenge, youngsters on two-wheelers coming on the wrong side is another,” she said.
Sriniket Shah, an IT employee criticised the authorities for not maintaining the roads properly. “Traffic congestion is too much in Hitec City. There are religious structures on the side of the road. Then the sevenseater autorickshaws stop on the middle of the road which is already narrow, causing accidents,” he said. GHMC additional chief city planner V. Ramudu, said that the civic body and APIIC were speeding up the process to improve road conditions, provide new link roads and widen the existing ones in Cyberabad for which land acq-uisition has already begun.
