The fact that the city deteriorated at the same time as the metro began being built has nothing to do with the metro itself. With the kind of increase in population and traffic that Bangalore has seen from that time till now, it should be considered a blessing that the city still survives.
Traffic problems are caused by private cars. If private cars continue to proliferate at the same rate, the city will die. Unless the city gets a metro on the lines of London or Singapore, the city is doomed.
Yes, private cars are the root cause. But, I am not sure if Metro alone would really alleviate that, especially to the extent that is expected.
I did not see Metro alleviating that issue in NCR which has more numbers of cars than remaining 3 metropolitan cities combined & continues to outpace all cities when it comes to buying cars.
People would buy cars, no matter what. Bigger & bigger, that is.
Normally, our middle-class starts with Maruti/Hyundai models, moves on to Honda quickly & get a SUV in no time (the new models are so easy to handle these days, after all).
But still, they have money to spare which goes into Reva, thankfully (especially if it is Bangalore). In Delhi, it would be a BMW/Merc or an imported one (even if second-hand).
One could argue that had it not been for Metro, the traffic bottlenecks could have been worse in NCR.
But, one never knows, its all speculation.
Our policy-makers are not highly adept or particularly known for their civic-planning skills. I am not sure how much of detailed planning & foresight would have gone into the study to determine the traffic growth models. I mean, all of it is speculation at best (which could have been influenced/manipulated by vested interests) unless stochastic models were really factored into (& a few million iterations of simulations were run on Hi-Perf Clusters), when planning for Metro (inception stage).
All I see is that the roads in NCR that used to known for their
width have become narrow streets/lanes, thanks to the Metro.
Only where all is underground, that real benefits could be realized.
I seriously doubt if BGL really needed this Metro. Metro took up lion's share of
road width of major arterial routes cutting across the city, which worsened the congestion. Had it not been for Metro, I believe one would have seen lot more green-open spaces & much wider roads + parking spaces.
Anyway, I am not sure who is really benefiting out of BGL Metro service (apart from the ubiquitous nexus I stated). I believe mostly college kids are using it, as of now.
Maybe, in future its real utility could be determined when Metro ventures out of the city to the new BGL suburbs, mushrooming all over.