City commuters suffer post-rain trauma

City commuters suffer post-rain trauma

Staff Reporter

Waterlogging brings traffic to a halt for hours on Mysore Road and Bellary Road

People living in the Vrushabhavati valley zone asked to vacate

Movement of BMTC buses affected due to waterlogging

— Photo: K. Murali Kumar

Rain fury: Traffic was affected for more than six hours at the CBI junction on Bellary Road as the stretch was flooded following heavy rain on Sunday night.

Bangalore: It took just one spell of monsoon rain to bring many parts of the city to a grinding halt on Sunday night and Monday morning. On Sunday night the city received eight cm of rain — which is nearly the total amount that Bangalore receives all of July (11 cm).

Waterlogging brought traffic to a standstill for hours on Monday morning on two arterial roads — Mysore Road and Bellary Road.

Commuters on Mysore Road had no choice but to abandon the vehicles they were travelling in on Monday morning when the buses got stuck at the Ring Road junction near Nayandahalli where silt had collected from an overflowing Vrushabhavati canal.

Men women and children, carrying their bags, walked for kilometres to reach their work places and schools.
Buses stop

No less than 80 BMTC buses were unable to move for as long as three hours on Monday morning because of the waterlogging, said Dastagir Sharief, Chief Technical Manager (Operations), BMTC.

Meanwhile, the Bruhat Bangalore Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) has asked the people living in the Vrushabhavati valley zone to vacate their houses immediately as there is a chance of damage to their properties during heavy rains.

BBMP Additional Commissioner (West) V. Srirama Reddy said that living in the valley zone at Kurubarahalli, Vrushabhavathinagar and Kamakshipalya are vulnerable. Also, those close to the stormwater drain at Mariyappanapalya, Nagappa Block and Srirampura have been asked to vacate.
Waterlogging

On Bellary Road, vehicles crawled for hours owing to waterlogging at CBI junction where the work on a magic box underpass is in progress. Traffic was affected here from Sunday midnight till noon on Monday.

Normality was restored only at 12.30 p.m. on Monday after BBMP personnel created an outlet amid the construction rubble to drain out the water.

Nalini Shastry whose children study at a school in Hebbal was worried that her children would be pulled up by the school management for being over an hour late. Their vehicle had to take an extensive detour through Vidyaranyapura when it got stuck at Mekhri Circle to where the 3-km traffic jam had extended.

“But when I called their school I realised that neither students nor teachers had reached the school on time,” she said.

BBMP has recently laid a new service road to divert vehicles moving towards Hebbal to enable the work on the underpass on the main carriage way. However, without a stormwater drain on the sides of the service road, rainwater inundated a 30-ft stretch here. The traffic jam also affected those travelling to Bengaluru International Airport.

According the Meteorological Department, Bangalore and other parts can expect rains for the next two days.