Bengaluru: As Ganesh Chathurthi falls on Monday, there is a long weekend for city residents and the police are expecting huge volumes of traffic in various parts of the city, as people head towards their home towns to celebrate the festival.
Tin Factory Junction and ITI Gate near K.R. Puram on Old Madras Road normally witnesses severe traffic jams, as hundreds of private buses stop to pick up passengers travelling towards various parts of Andhra Pradesh, Telangana and Tamil Nadu. The City traffic police are planning to deploy more than 20 traffic policemen at these two points and even barricade the path to ensure that the private buses enter only through these barricades and do not stop anywhere on the road, which leads to congestion.
A senior traffic police officer said, “It is not only at these two places the traffic police personnel and Home Guards will be deployed but at various points across the City, where people board buses. But at Tin Factory and ITI Gate, we are ensuring that there is no traffic jams because it already has heavy traffic movement and the weekend rush shouldn’t add to the chaos.”
“Previously, we had experienced that due to extended weekend rush, we had a harrowing time clearing the traffic which had stretched to over 4 to 5 kilometres from ITI Gate to Swami Vivekanada Metro station. But this time, we will ensure that no private bus stops for more than five minutes and we also request the passengers to be on time,” he added.
The officer further mentioned that the private bus drivers will have to maintain traffic decorum and park at the designated spots to pick up passengers, if they are found parking on the middle of the road, the vehicles will be seized.
