Thousands converging on the Yelahanka Air Force station for Aero India 2023 were stuck in bumper-to-bumper traffic despite police efforts to smoothly maintain vehicle movement on the main road.
Spectators of the air show, which was opened to the public, along the road outside the venue said they reached the place later than expected due to crawling traffic and crowd outside the venue’s entrance.
“We left MS Palya at 8 am and reached here only at 10.30 am. We were stuck at the Mother Dairy Cross for nearly two hours,” said Magesh, a native of Tamil Nadu. He said his sister and her family arrived at the venue at 7 am and were seated after a few hours.
A group of students from Mysuru got off the bus much ahead of the venue and walked the rest of the distance to reach on time. “The vehicles barely moved for about half-an-hour, so we decided to get out at the service road and walk to the viewing spot,” one student said.
As police redirected goods vehicles to the service road underneath the flyover, traffic moved in the morning on Ballari Road from Hebbal. Traffic, however, slowed further down the road. A long line of cars were seen crawling from Esteem Mall to the Hebbal flyover at 10.30 am. The service road connected to the Ballari Road flyover just before Kogilu Cross also witnessed traffic jam.
Parking confusion
Confusion prevailed among people about the roads to take to get to both the Air Display Viewing Area (ADVA) and domestic parking areas, despite the clear traffic notifications and parking guidelines that the Bengaluru Traffic Police (BTP) had released in the past week.
DH found in a reality check that the confusion was caused due to absence of effective signboards, some of which were incorrectly positioned. Vehicles on either side of the highway were seen stopping to ask for directions or park on the side to cause further traffic slowdown.
Dr M A Saleem, Special Commissioner of Police (Traffic), said vehicles with passes also had QR codes with directions to their designated parking spot to avoid such confusion.