BENGALURU: Moderate rainfall in the Mahadevapura zone was enough to cause heavy traffic jams on Outer Ring Road (ORR) and Arterial Ring Road (ARR) on Wednesday evening.
It was compounded by water-logging, Ganesha immersion and many heading out of town because of the long weekend.
The severe traffic congestion prevailed from 4 PM to about 8 PM, forcing the Outer Ring Road Companies Association (ORRCA) to issue an advisory to member companies to inform their staffers to avoid leaving the office early and wait until the situation improved.
Bellandur and HAL traffic police swung into action and cleared the water-logged points at Chroma Road, Kadubeesanahalli and Sakra Hospital junction.
“As it rained for about 40 minutes in the afternoon, there was water-logging at various points. The traffic was slow and in the evening, the crowd swelled due to Ganesh Visarjan and the long weekend ahead due to Eid Milad holiday on Thursday and Friday Bandh. Traffic was hit from 4 PM and started to ease only by about 8 PM,” said a senior traffic police official from the Bellandur traffic police station.
Jagadish Reddy from Varthur Rising said had the Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) removed the encroachments on Panathur-Chroma Road, the situation would have been much better during rain.
“There is an underpass near Chroma Road and we call this ‘Kanakana Kindi’ and traffic becomes dead slow during peak hours here,” he said.
Krishna Kumar Gowda, Operations Manager, ORRCA, said as there was a bandh on Tuesday when many employees of IT companies were allowed to work from home, on Wednesday, many had come to their offices on ORR to work offline.
“Multiple factors like rain, water-logging, Ganesha immersion crowds, people travelling out of the city and Friday Karnataka bandh — all contributed to heavy traffic today on ORR and ARR. Many were stuck in traffic, and as a result an alert was sent on Twitter to caution the others about the traffic congestion,” he said.
Here are a few tweets from netizens on the traffic situation: