Mysuru Ring Road Tree Clearance Begins For Flyover
Tree clearance has begun at the Bengaluru-Mysuru Expressway and Mysuru Ring Road junction as work advances on a flyover and underpass intended to improve movement through one of Mysuru’s important traffic nodes. The development puts road capacity and the city’s established green cover on a direct collision course, with hundreds of trees linked to the infrastructure works and renewed scrutiny over whether environmental safeguards can keep pace with construction.
The project includes a 1,008-metre flyover carrying NH-275 traffic from the Mysuru side and a 750-metre underpass for Ring Road traffic. The works, estimated at ₹63.67 crore, are designed to separate traffic flows at the junction and reduce conflicts between through traffic and vehicles using the Ring Road.The environmental cost, however, has been substantial. Officials had identified about 350 trees for clearance across locations including Siddique Nagar, Bannimantap Road Park and medians along Hunsur and Nanjangud roads. The identified species include Indian rosewood, rain trees, Indian beech, neem, mango and other mature trees. The scale of the proposed clearance had prompted calls for alternatives before permissions were granted. Earlier assessments examined whether some trees could be retained or moved, while environmental groups argued that small design changes could reduce the number affected. The forest department subsequently granted permission with conditions that included saving some trees and translocating others. That distinction matters because replacing mature trees with saplings does not provide an immediate equivalent environmental benefit.
Established trees contribute shade, carbon storage, habitat and stormwater interception over decades. Young plantations require years of maintenance before they can deliver comparable canopy, making survival rates and monitoring more important than compensatory planting numbers alone. The project also raises a broader planning question for Mysuru. The city has historically retained substantial tree cover and landscaped public spaces, even as road traffic and regional connectivity have increased. Transport upgrades are necessary as the metropolitan area expands, but junction improvements need to account for the environmental functions of existing roadside vegetation. For a city facing hotter summers and increasingly intense rainfall, mature tree corridors can form part of its climate-resilience infrastructure. Their removal can increase exposed hard surfaces and reduce shade around roads, while poorly planned replacement planting may create new maintenance and water requirements. The immediate priority is therefore to ensure that every permitted clearance is accompanied by transparent monitoring of tree translocation, compensatory planting and survival. Project authorities also need to demonstrate that the final road design has minimised avoidable loss.
Mysuru’s challenge is not choosing between mobility and greenery in absolute terms. It is designing transport infrastructure that uses land efficiently while retaining as much existing ecological value as possible. The success of the junction project will ultimately depend on whether faster movement can be delivered without weakening the green systems that make the city liveable.
