Bengaluru’s pothole crisis is no longer confined to isolated stretches of bad road. In the city’s expanding technology belt, damaged carriageways, open sewage, dust and waterlogging are exposing a deeper infrastructure problem: urban growth has moved faster than the systems responsible for building, maintaining and coordinating roads.
On Gunjur-Doddakaneli Road, which connects Carmelaram to the tech corridor, motorists are pushing vehicles out of deep pits and negotiating craters whose depths are difficult to judge. Nearby stretches, including Hosa Road, have broken surfaces, dust and open sewage. A journey that should take about 20 minutes can stretch to an hour, with school buses moving slowly and two-wheeler riders forced to choose between unstable surfaces and longer alternative routes.
The immediate damage is visible in lost time, vehicle repairs and difficult commutes. The larger concern is that a road failure in a rapidly urbanising corridor can become a safety, drainage and governance failure at the same time. Rainwater conceals potholes and turns damaged surfaces slushy. When the weather clears, dust reduces visibility and makes travel uncomfortable. The same road therefore changes from a hidden obstacle during rain to a visibility and breathing hazard when it dries.
For two-wheeler users, the risks are particularly serious. A sudden brake, uneven surface or slippery patch can cause a rider to lose balance, while a pothole can force a vehicle into the path of oncoming traffic. The death of 32-year-old Medha Akarsh after a two-wheeler crash on a damaged stretch of Anantnagar Main Road in Electronics City in August renewed concern about road conditions. Police identified sudden braking as the immediate cause in preliminary findings and acknowledged that the road was in poor condition, while the precise role of the damaged surface remained under investigation.
A similar uncertainty surrounded the death of 20-year-old college student Dhanushree near Budigere Cross in September 2025. Residents alleged that she was thrown from her scooter while negotiating a pothole, but police had not established whether the pothole contributed to the accident. These cases illustrate an important difficulty in assessing road safety: poor surfaces may not always be recorded as the primary cause of a crash, even when they influence braking, balance, speed or manoeuvring.
Historical figures indicate that the concern is not new. Official data cited in a Times of India report in February 2022 recorded at least 13 deaths in 12 accidents specifically attributed to potholes within Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike limits over five years. Seven of those deaths occurred in 2021 and three in 2020. The figures do not describe the current condition of every road, but they establish that potholes have been a recognised road-safety issue for years rather than a temporary monsoon inconvenience.
The city’s latest road survey shows the scale of the maintenance challenge. An artificial-intelligence-based assessment of 2,493.5 kilometres of roads across seven divisions and 72 wards under Bengaluru North City Corporation identified 14,393 potholes. Dashcams captured real-time images that were used to map road conditions and help prioritise repairs.
The survey also shows why a simple count of potholes is not enough. It classified 1,426.8 kilometres of roads as being in good condition and another 607.1 kilometres as having minor surface defects. Other stretches were affected by localised damage, utility-related excavation and unpaved surfaces. Byatarayanapura recorded the highest number of potholes at 5,964, followed by Sarvagnanagar with 2,359 and Pulikeshi Nagar with 1,357.
The corporation said the data could help shift road maintenance away from a complaint-driven model towards technology-based planning. That change matters because complaint-based systems tend to respond to visible failures after residents report them. A survey-based system can identify patterns across a network, compare road conditions and prioritise interventions before a damaged section becomes impassable. However, the survey itself does not repair a road. Its value depends on whether assessment is linked to budgets, contracts, agency responsibility and verifiable completion of work.
Bengaluru’s road problem is also a problem of sequencing. Authorities have ordered immediate measures such as laying gravel on damaged stretches, while white-topping work has begun on Gunjur CDP Road. Such interventions may improve passability, but residents remain doubtful that temporary repairs can keep pace with deterioration. The question is not only whether a pothole is filled, but whether the road will remain stable through the next period of heavy rain and traffic.
Several processes can combine to produce the same failure. Poor drainage allows water to collect and seep into the road structure. Utility agencies may excavate the surface for water, sewage or other services and restore it unevenly. Heavy traffic then accelerates the breakdown. When these responsibilities are treated separately, a road can be repaired on the surface while the drainage or utility problem beneath it remains unresolved.
A cavity on Kanteerava Studio Main Road demonstrated the consequences. After two days of heavy rain, a section of the carriageway gave way and exposed a hollow passage underneath. Water had eroded soil and the road structure as it moved towards a manhole, creating what appeared to be a tunnel beneath the road. Officials began filling the cavity with broken concrete blocks and construction debris while traffic continued to pass the damaged section.
Residents said the stretch between Surana College and Nandini Layout had deteriorated for years, with utility cuts and inadequate restoration leaving sections vulnerable. Bengaluru West City Corporation commissioner Rajendra KV said funds had been approved for asphalting under the Special Infrastructure Project. The work had been complicated by a proposal from Bengaluru Smart Infrastructure Limited to take up white-topping, but the commissioner said the civic body would proceed with asphalting after the rains subsided.
The episode points to a wider institutional issue: road construction, drainage, sewage, electricity and transport infrastructure often operate through different agencies, even when they occupy the same corridor. A road cannot function reliably if its surface is renewed without resolving the water movement below it, or if utility work repeatedly cuts into a carriageway without a durable restoration standard.
The state government has acknowledged the need to combine immediate relief with longer-term infrastructure work. During an inspection of the Sarjapur Road-Dommasandra-Gunjur-Varthur-Balagere corridor on September 30, Greater Bengaluru Development Minister Krishna Byre Gowda directed officials to accelerate road and infrastructure works. He asked them to prioritise pothole repairs, waterlogging, damaged roadside pits and debris removal, using gravel where necessary to make roads motorable.
The minister also directed officials to address drainage improvements, junction modifications and coordination among agencies handling roads, electricity, water supply and Metro infrastructure. At the Dommasandra Circle-Varthur stretch, he questioned why available road space could not be cleared and made usable while land acquisition issues were being resolved. He also flagged alleged encroachments along the Gunjur-Dommasandra corridor and asked officials to examine transformers obstructing traffic and road development.
These instructions reveal the difference between a road repair order and a corridor-level infrastructure plan. Pothole filling can address an immediate hazard, but it cannot by itself resolve blocked drains, encroachments, land acquisition, utility conflicts or inadequate road width. The corridor requires agencies to work against a shared sequence of priorities rather than deliver disconnected projects that repeatedly disturb the same surface.
Funding is another unresolved part of the system. On September 5, BJP MP Tejasvi Surya sought a white paper on the Rs 5,500 crore the state government had reportedly spent on Bengaluru roadworks and pothole management over three years. He questioned why roads remained riddled with potholes and demanded a detailed account before further spending. His demand was a political challenge to the government, not an independently established finding of financial irregularity. Nevertheless, it raises a public accountability question: how much spending is reaching durable road construction, and how much is being absorbed by repeated emergency repairs?
The technology belt makes that question more urgent. Bengaluru’s employment hubs have expanded alongside residential neighbourhoods, schools and daily service activity. Roads linking these areas to major corridors carry commuters, school buses, goods vehicles and two-wheelers, but the infrastructure supporting that growth has not always expanded at the same pace. The result is a mismatch between the economic importance of the corridor and the basic reliability of its streets.
The available evidence does not establish that every road failure has one cause or that every repair programme has failed. It does show a recurring pattern: high traffic on rapidly urbanising roads, water entering weakened surfaces, utility excavations, fragmented responsibility and repairs that residents fear may not survive the next rain. The AI survey provides a method for identifying defects, while official inspections and repair orders provide an administrative response. What remains unclear is how these systems will be connected to durable construction standards and public monitoring.
For residents, the issue is experienced not as an abstract infrastructure deficit but as a daily calculation. They slow down, change routes, avoid water-covered sections and watch for vehicles losing balance. A pothole may damage a suspension, delay a worker, trap a school bus or trigger a sudden manoeuvre. Several hazards in sequence can turn a short commute into a test of judgement and endurance.
Bengaluru’s road crisis therefore needs to be measured not only by the number of potholes filled, but by whether roads remain safe and passable after rain, whether utility cuts are properly restored, whether drainage is integrated into road design and whether agencies can deliver work without leaving the same corridor in permanent disruption. The next test will be whether the promised immediate repairs and planned asphalting translate into roads that remain functional beyond the current repair cycle.
