Koramangala used to be a very beautiful, very posh and very nice extension of Bangalore 10 years back. I remember my first job in Bangalore, with the office on the main Koramangala road just 200 meters from Raheja Arcade. The road was spacious, not too much traffic, the restaurants were great and it was a place one aspired to come to/live in/hang out etc. The travel time from my home to Koramangala (distance ~ 12 km) was not more than 30 mins.
Come 2006, and one visit to Koramangala is enough to convince any die hard city slicker to dump it all and move to the Amazon with a fishing rod in hand and Odomus in the pocket. Getting into Koramangala from any side is pretty much impossible. Try the Dairy Circle route - the flyover (which took 100 years to build) has cleared up that junction, but has pushed the traffic jam to just after the flyover ends (opposite Christ College). 30 mins is on par to cross Christ College and the Forum at peak hours. Try the Indiranagar side, from the Inner Ring Road. Just after the Sony Showroom, be prepared for undefined traffic logjams (could vary from 30 mins - 1 1/2 hrs) between Canara Bank and BDA Complex and beyond. Try Silk Board and Madivala - same bloody story, and the oneways don't help either.
Net net, the only option is perhaps a drop from the sky via helicopter.
What's happening (according to me anyway) is that flyovers are being done on all sides - Dairy Circle, Silk Board and Indiranagar Inner Ring Road - but the heart of the matter is left undisturbed. Traffic has grown exponentially, and the roads within the locality have remained the same. This has led to a logjam that logically cannot be cleared unless traffic reduces, because there is no place to expand roads!
Why, oh why did this come to such a pass?
The supreme irony, however, is that 2400 sq feet sites go for anything between 1 crore - 1.5 crore now. Surreal, crazy, simply unexplainable!
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