The constant deadlock

The slender road is backed up for kilometres and motorists can do nothing but sit impatiently in their vehicles, hoping the traffic will move sometime soon.

As the minutes crawl by and the colours of the sky begin to change, the line seems to have moved a little, but it brings no relief to the passengers — they will be hostages to this dreaded traffic jam for a while longer.

The traffic jam on Hosur Road is nothing new. Over the years, people have been spending increasing amounts of time in an attempt to navigate the road that remains a deadlock to everyone. Even as attempts are made to deal with the traffic, it is inevitable that the mess created might need a bigger mop. 

Fatima Bakery and Super Market sit on the brink of this jammed road. It witnesses the daily snarls that take place outside its store. This last leg of Hosur Road, which connects two of the City’s most popular area’s, Koramangala and Brigade Road, leaves behind a path of destruction in its wake. Asha Umamahesh, who travels the route regularly, says it takes her double the time to reach her destination during peak hours. “This road is blocked on all days except for the weekends, but during peak hours of traffic, a normal 20-minute commute takes almost 45 minutes. It gets very congested, especially at the Fatima Bakery junction because all the vehicles are moving together, in every direction. The problem is that the road widens at that point so everyone come there and make a mess of things,” she says. 

She adds, “The road also gets congested because of all the potholes at the junction. They are big and always filled with slush. The road is clean until you get to this point and you don’t mind the pollution because of the trees, but then it gets unbearable.” 

Other commuters are disappointed with the condition of the road as well. “I was in a hurry to reach home but I got stuck on that road in the evening traffic. It was so bad that I would get stuck every 15 minutes and it would take 20 minutes to get past one signal. It took me an hour and a half to get past that road. I have never been in such kind of a traffic jam before,” says Rasheeda. 

She adds, “These days, people even have a tough time travelling short distances. There is no real thought into what the BBMP is doing - they want to widen the roads but are narrowing the roads with the Tender SURE projects. We just have to suffer through it.”
 But there are some commuters who say they try and avoid the route as much as possible, even if it means taking a longer route. “It is the ideal route for me but I avoid it because of the terrible traffic. Instead I take a longer route, which has less traffic, except on weekends,” says Vaishak, a designer. Maitri, a student, also says she prefers not taking this route because she travels by bus and tends to get caught for hours in traffic.