Private buses create traffic chaos on Tumakuru Road

Traffic along Tumakuru Road turned chaotic once again with private buses, restricted to the flyover, returning to the road.

The buses have a contract carriage permit that prohibits them from picking up passengers between the origin and destination points. But most of the 1,500 buses stop at several locations within the city limits and this leads to traffic jams.

Since Tumakuru Road is the major entry and exit point between Bengaluru and the northern parts of the state, the traffic police had imposed restrictions to end the menace created by contract carriage buses.

Last year, City Police Commissioner T Suneel Kumar issued rules for such buses. “Private contract carriage buses are barred from operating at Peenya, Jalahalli Cross and 8th Mile. They have to mandatorily ply on the flyover from Goraguntepalya,” he said, while making an exception for the buses entering Bengaluru.

The order was passed on March 26 under Section 116 of the Central Motor Vehicle Act, 1988. However, its validity was limited to a month unless published in the state gazette.

“The order never appeared in the gazette. We checked with officials in the
section concerned and they said they never received it,” said a source in the transport department.

The buses, earlier banned on the grade-level road, gradually started picking passengers from the service road and the main road below the flyover, the traffic police said.

“We know contract carriage buses stop along the road to pick passengers. The artificial traffic jams they create are a regular headache. But stopping them is the job of RTO officials,” a policeman said.

Officials from the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation (KSRTC) were the first to complain to the police.

“This was the same time when we were planning to shift a majority of services from the Kempegowda bus station in Majestic to the Peenya satellite station. As private buses avoided the flyover, we knew they would illegally pick up half the passengers who would have taken public transport,” a senior official said.