Tempers fly, traffic crawls as vehicle restrictions kick in on Bengaluru airport road

Traffic on airport road near Sanjeevininagar Cross in north Bengaluru crawled on Friday during peak hours, while motorists hurled abuses at traffic police personnel who were at the spot to enforce the ban on certain categories of vehicles, including two-wheelers, on the elevated corridor.

The Bengaluru Traffic Police (BTP) enforced its announcement of a ban on certain categories of vehicles on four elevated corridors in the city on Friday, with only the airport road flyover seeing a ban on two-wheelers.

Chaos ensued on airport road, with the congestion extending for nearly a kilometre, while the other three flyovers — BGS, Peenya, and Double Decker — saw effective enforcement, resulting in considerable traffic disruption.

At each flyover, at least 10 police personnel were deployed to divert restricted vehicles from entering the flyover. They stood at both edges of the entrances to the elevated corridors, carrying batons with blinking red lights.

Although heavy vehicles and autorickshaws were restricted, two-wheeler riders maneuvered through the gaps between heavy vehicles and evaded police restrictions, entering the flyover.

“It is deadly for both our officers and the motorists if we try to stop them, because a lot of vehicles commute along the stretch; even one fall could turn fatal. We refrained from strict enforcement but diverted 50% of two-wheelers who were driving on the sides of the road,” an officer at the field told The Hindu.

When riders commuting along the sides of the road were asked to move to the service lanes, they stopped and questioned the traffic personnel about the many two-wheelers entering the flyover.

As the traffic police started imposing a no-entry restriction on goods vehicles and autorickshaws, they stopped them in the middle of the road, which meant slowing down traffic.

However, the disruption was not significant along the service lanes, which saw seamless movement of vehicles. But for the officers, it was a long day at work as they worked in three-hour shifts alternately from 6 a.m. to 9 p.m.

An officer said: “Commuters have to be familiarised about the diversions for some days; hence, we also didn’t expect 100% enforcement. But when strict enforcement is taken up, we will start booking cases.”

In addition, the elevated corridors have AI-equipped cameras through which cases will be booked for flouting “no-entry” rules, which attract a penalty of ₹500.

While the BTP has backed the move of restrictions by citing accident data that shows 15 fatal accidents on the KIA elevated corridor stretch in 19 months, two-wheeler riders questioned whether banning them was the only way to curb accidents.

Nakul S., a resident of Yelahanka, questioned whether the BTP was running a pilot to turn all flyovers in the city into corridors exclusively for cars and buses. “It is the police’s job to shape lane discipline among commuters, which they have failed to do. There are ways to curb haphazard driving with advanced traffic technologies, which should be explored, rather than keeping two-wheelers away from roads citing safety,” he said.