Bengaluru Floats Tender For Longest Tolled Flyover
Bengaluru has moved closer to building two of its largest elevated road corridors, with Bengaluru Smart Infrastructure Limited (B-SMILE) floating a tender for a 28-km elevated route from Yeshwanthpur to Tin Factory and an 18.5-km corridor between Ragigudda and Thalaghattapura. Together, the projects would create 46.5 km of elevated road capacity and introduce user charges on major intra-city corridors.
The proposed network represents a significant shift in how Bengaluru plans to finance road infrastructure. The two corridors are estimated to cost about ₹7,577 crore and are proposed under a Hybrid Annuity Model, in which a private concessionaire would undertake part of the financing, construction and maintenance while the government provides viability-gap funding. The two projects together would receive around ₹2,796 crore in government support. The larger corridor would connect Yeshwanthpur with Old Madras Road at Tin Factory through several high-demand urban locations, including IISc, Mekhri Circle, Jayamahal, St John’s Church Road and Ulsoor Lake. Designed as a six-lane elevated road, it is estimated at ₹4,621.45 crore. The second corridor, estimated at ₹2,956.32 crore, would run between Ragigudda Junction and Thalaghattapura through the BWSSB Pipeline Road corridor. The financing structure is important because tolling an urban road changes how mobility costs are distributed. While user charges can provide a dedicated revenue stream for construction and maintenance, they can also make faster journeys more expensive for people who have limited alternatives.
The success of such a model will therefore depend on whether adequate at-grade roads and public transport options remain available. Bengaluru has previously used toll-based infrastructure on major regional routes. The Electronics City elevated expressway, for example, is already operated as a tolled facility, while the NICE corridor also uses user charges. The proposed projects would extend that principle deeper into the city’s established neighbourhoods. There is also a wider urban-planning concern. Elevated roads can separate through traffic from junction-level movement, but they do not automatically reduce total vehicle demand. If additional road capacity encourages more private vehicle use, congestion can eventually return elsewhere in the network. That makes integration with mass transit particularly important.Bengaluru’s Metro expansion is simultaneously creating higher-capacity public transport corridors, including double-decker sections where road and Metro infrastructure share the same structure. Planning these investments as a connected mobility system will be critical to avoiding competing infrastructure. The two tolled corridors could improve travel reliability if designed around genuine bottlenecks and supported by strong surface-level mobility.
But their long-term value will depend on transparent toll policies, pedestrian and bus access below the structures, environmental safeguards and effective maintenance. For Bengaluru, the tender marks an important financing and infrastructure decision. The bigger question is whether elevated capacity can be added without deepening the city’s dependence on private vehicles—and whether the benefits of faster movement are accessible to the wider urban population.
