1.4km, 90 minutes: Bengaluru’s Sarjapur residents demand urgent fix to traffic mess | Bengaluru News

Bengaluru: Commuters along the Sarjapur-Dommasandra stretch are losing nearly an hour to cover just a 1.4km stretch, between Chambenahalli and Dommasandra Junction, especially during peak hours, prompting residents and institutions in the area to demand immediate relief.Local residents and educational institutions have sent letters to the traffic authorities, seeking their help to end the daily nightmare.Dommasandra Circle is a four-way junction connecting Whitefield and Marathahalli Ring Road, and traffic gridlock starts from the stretch beginning from Chambenahalli village road towards Dommasandra Junction, which is located on Sarjapur Road.According to locals, the construction of a flyover over Dommasandra Junction, which started in Sept 2020, has seen no progress. This has turned the area into a major bottleneck, leading to prolonged traffic jams that cause inconvenience to residents, especially during peak school hours. The gridlock causes daily delays for school-going children and office workers.To add to the problem, more than 10 educational institutions are situated in Sarjapur village, and IT employees often use the junction to reach Whitefield and Marathahalli for work. With massive residential projects being constructed, vehicular movement has increased with more residents shifting to the area.We’re fed up, say locals Residents along with heads of educational institutions in the area are demanding immediate govt intervention, saying long delays lead to multiple problems for office-goers and students. Sai PV, 46, a resident of Sarjapur village for the past six years, said: “Things have become unbearable, especially since schools reopened. It takes me 45 minutes to an hour, and even longer on bad days. On one occasion, I left home at 8am and only reached my office in Ecoworld (on ORR) by 11am. There’s no traffic police at key junctions, people drive on the wrong side, and the road is packed with construction trucks. It’s extremely frustrating.“Nitin Garag, chairman of the International School of Management Excellence, Dommasandra, said: “Our students are consistently delayed for classes. Last week, students from ISME college missed their exams because they were trapped in a traffic jam. Children who should be home in 30 minutes now take over an hour and 15 minutes to get back. This is not just a traffic issue — it’s affecting students’ academic performance and daily lives. We’re flooded with complaints daily.”Nooraine Fazal, CEO of Inventure Academy, Whitefield, said: “At Inventure, we have 1,400 students and 260 teaching staff — 90% of whom rely on school buses. Every day, they face an exhausting commute due to severe traffic congestion caused by inadequate road and mobility infrastructure. We’re losing precious teaching and learning time… How can students be expected to focus in class, or participate in sports and co-curricular activities, when they arrive at school already tired?” She added that it is high time the govt prioritised sustainable mobility solutions. The official explanationA senior traffic cop said: “The mess is because of the halted flyover construction. A lot of buildings have come up, and there are a lot of educational institutions as well. Once the construction is completed, traffic will ease by a lot. More than three cops have been deployed the whole day to control the traffic situation, but it depends on the vehicular flow as well.”