A well-intentioned traffic intervention has turned into a daily nightmare on Banjara Hills Road Number 12. Officials closed existing U-turns on wider sections of the 3.2 kilometre stretch and relocated them to narrower portions — where a single car taking a turn now brings traffic to a complete halt. Sometimes, drivers must reverse to complete the manoeuvre.
The irony is not lost on daily commuters. An existing U-turn near the crematorium was shut down. The replacement sits just metres away, but at a point where the road visibly shrinks. A senior traffic official claimed the changes were meant to streamline movement. Instead, motorists report that the stretch from Maharaja Shri Agrasen Statue to Road Number 1 has become a parking lot during peak hours. School buses, college vans, TGSRTC buses, cabs, and private vehicles all share this corridor. When one bus takes the new U-turn, the queue behind stretches for hundreds of metres. A nurse commuting on a two-wheeler pointed out an urgent concern: ambulances heading toward hospitals and hearses approaching the crematorium now face unpredictable delays. “Imagine the plight of those performing last rites,” she said.
Urban transport planners have long warned that U-turn placement requires careful geometric analysis — including turning radius, sight distance, and lane width. A U-turn at a narrow point forces vehicles to slow to near-zero speeds, creating shockwaves of congestion that propagate backward. The Banjara Hills redesign appears to have ignored these fundamentals. Making matters worse, a portion of the same stretch is currently excavated for water and sewage works by the Hyderabad Metropolitan Water Supply and Sewerage Board. The digging, combined with the poorly placed U-turns, has turned a once-smooth commute into a daily test of patience.
The Greater Hyderabad Municipal Corporation is proceeding with road widening under the Master Plan 2010, where Road Number 12 is listed for urban transport improvement. But widening — when done piecemeal and without coordinated utility planning — often worsens congestion before it gets better. Commuters are living through that painful interval now. What changes next is uncertain. Traffic police may tweak the U-turn locations if complaints persist. But the deeper lesson is for urban planners: road design is not just about asphalt width. It is about how vehicles actually move — and where they turn.
Hyderabad Road Widening Backfires With Narrow U Turns
