BENGALURU: A day after the Bengaluru bandh rendered the roads free of traffic on Tuesday, the city was back to its form after massive traffic congestions were reported in multiple parts of the city on Wednesday.
The infamous Outer Ring Road (ORR) stretch and surrounding areas that consists of major tech parks and around 10 lakh IT employees, reported unprecedented traffic on Wednesday leading to great deal of frustration among commuters.
According to the Bengaluru traffic police department, multiple factors caused the traffic congestion in the region. The traffic on Wednesday was 2x than on the normal day. Usually the vehicle count on Wednesdays is 1.5 lakh to 2 lakh. However on September 27, the vehicular count reached a whopping 3.5 lakh as of 7:30 pm.
The traffic department stated that this is the effect of yesterday’s bandh wherein a lot of employees attended work on Wednesday and tried to exit from their workplace at the same time in the evening.
One of the other reasons for the traffic congestion is the upcoming long weekend. While Thursday is marked by Id-milad, Friday is marked by Karnataka bandh. Further Saturday and Sunday is a weekend, Gandhi Jayanti which is observed on Monday is another public holiday. Traffic police department observed that a lot of residents around ORR and surrounding areas were exiting Bengaluru through the same route, leading to slow vehicular movement. In addition, rainfall has caused waterlogging at several interior roads and multiple vehicle breakdowns between 3:30 pm and 5pm were also reported which led to traffic jams.
The Outer Ring Road Companies Association, that represents companies between Central Silk Board junction and KR Puram, also alerted its member companies to inform the employees to extend their exit time to avoid the gridlock in ORR.