3.5 lakh vehicles choke Bengaluru’s Outer Ring Road leading to massive traffic congestion, a day after bandh

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 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.

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.

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.

Many netizens took to X, to share their harrowing experience of wading through gridlocks around the ORR stretch. Arvind Prakash, tweeted that, “Extremely extremely bad traffic in BLR ORR today evening. My card mileage dropped from kilometers per litre to litres per kilometer. I have covered 7kms in 2 hours so far from Whitefield to Marathahalli and got 5 more kms cover.”

Mubida another user said, “Cab stuck at Whitefield, we decided to head to the nearest metro station, took nearly 2 hours. Seetharampalya to K.R Puram by metro, running in the rain, we caught a bus to Tin Factory, then another to Baiyapanahalli Metro. Nearly 5 hours later finally home.”

Tushar tweeted that, “My friend walked 12Kms back home in Bangalore today.He wasn’t getting any cabs/autos/rapido or anything else.Quality of life even for top 1% after having all the means is only hitting lows & lows in this city.”