NICE Road: A not-so-nice story of what was to be Karnataka’s world-class highway Premium

Bengaluru news: NICE Road in Bengaluru, once a promising expressway, now faces controversy and opposition, raising questions about its future.

Driving in Bengaluru city may not be anyone’s idea of fun or even relaxation. But there is a road in its suburbs that promises an out-of-India driving experience.

On this road, access is only through tolled exit and entry ramps, which means no pedestrian or cyclist will suddenly dart across. A large, grassy median and an emergency lane at regular intervals on the left would remind Bengaluru’s techies of tree-lined parkways in the United States of America.

The Bangalore-Mysore Infrastructure Corridor (BMICP), better known as NICE Road, after its promoter Nandi Infrastructure Corridor Enterprises, was originally intended to make driving from Bengaluru to Mysuru a breeze. Thirty years after the project was conceived, however, NICE Road remains just a link road between the IT & ITES corridor in the southeast parts of the city and the industrial corridor in the southwest, not a highway connecting two major cities in Karnataka that are 140-km apart.

Now, two wheelers have been banned in the night. Recent fatal crashes involving speeding vehicles, hike in the toll fee, and changes in speed limits tell a story of how NICE road never fulfilled its original promises.

NICE Road was a pet project of Deve Gowda who later became its chief detractor too. In 1995, a year before he became Prime Minister, Mr Gowda signed an agreement as Chief Minister of Karnataka with US-based Ashok Kheny, the head of SAB Engineering and Construction, on constructing the road. A framework agreement in 1997 envisioned a world-class infrastructure developing around NICE Road. Besides the expressway, there were to be a ring road and a link road with multiple entry and exit points. There were to be five new townships along the way.

The ring road was to connect the crucial Bengaluru-Chennai National Highway 48, Bengaluru -Mumbai National Highway 4 and the Bengaluru-Mysuru National Highway 275 (formerly State Highway 17), and hence take the load off the garden city’s roads that were already seeing chock-a-block traffic.

In the involvement of a private player, in conception and design, as well as in having tolled ramp access, NICE Road was far ahead of its time. It was an era when national highways were poorly laid and maintained, and the Private-Public-Partnership concept was still being debated.