The tech corridor alongside the Outer Ring Road (ORR) witnessed traffic gridlock, which lasted for around four hours in the evening on Wednesday ahead of the weekend, preceded by the Eid Milad holiday on Thursday and the call for Karnataka bandh on Friday.
Commuters, including children in school buses, travelling through areas like Marathahalli, Bellandur, Sarjapur, Varthur, Whitefield and Iblur, took almost double the usual time to reach their destinations.
The Bengaluru Traffic Police (BTP) also appealed to the employees of IT/BT companies in the corridor not to rush out on the road in the evening and delay their departure time to avoid adding to the congestion.
According to regular commuters and traffic police, ORR witnessed traffic snarls throughout the day, and many officegoers took almost three hours to reach their workplaces in the morning.
Cascading effect
“There was a huge number of vehicles on the road. As there was a bandh on Tuesday, it had a cascading effect, with more employees coming to the office on Wednesday. With the long weekend also coming up, the outflux and influx of traffic was very high. The congestion, which would usually take an hour to clear, took over 1.5 hours today (Wednesday),” said Kuldeep Kumar Jain, DCP (Traffic), East Division.
He also said the breakdown of one vehicle and a spell of rain also added to the traffic woes along the corridor. “After assessing the traffic situation in the morning, we were well prepared and were on the field by 3 p.m. However, the vehicles just kept increasing,” he said.
Ahmed Faraz, an IT employee who works near Sarjapur, said he changed his regular commute route after checking the traffic situation on Google Maps and still ended up reaching home later than usual. “The traffic was bad in the morning, and it took 15–20 more minutes than usual to reach the office. My commute from the office to my house in Jeevan Bima Nagar takes around 30-35 minutes, and on Wednesday, Google Maps showed 1 hour 45 minutes as the travel time. Instead of the Bellandur route, I went via Koramangala, and I reached home in 1 hour 20 minutes,” he explained.
Gagan, whose children are studying in classes 3 and 5, along with others from that school, were stuck in a school bus for over two hours near Sakra Hospital. He said, “While my children usually come home by 3.30 p.m., they reached only around 6 p.m. due to the traffic.”
The traffic congestion also brought the limelight back on the existing civic problems along the tech corridor, including narrow roads, waterlogging and potholes. “We have now started an online petition to highlight the traffic problems at the Dommasandra junction. The work on the flyover, which was supposed to come there to solve traffic problems, has been stopped haphazardly. This leads to waterlogging when there is rain and traffic comes to a halt creating snarls all along,” said Deepanjali from Voice of Sarjapur.
Slow moving traffic at exit points
With a five-day long weekend coming up, many people made their journey out of the city on Wednesday, leading to bumper-to-bumper traffic along the exit points. Ballari Road, Mysuru Road, Tumakuru Road, Hoskote Road along K.R. Puram were among the points where traffic snarls were reported.
“This is very common in Bengaluru during long weekends. However, there was no congestion at any of these points and just slow-moving traffic. Only ORR was badly affected,” said M.N. Anucheth, Joint Commissioner of Police (Traffic).
