Bengaluru: Brace for a Deepavali getaway rush on major roads as lakhs of Bengalureans prepare to hit the highways from Friday morning, triggering what traffic police expect to be one of the biggest festive outflows from the city. With families heading to their native places to celebrate the festival, traffic is expected to swell sharply along key exit corridors, including Tumakuru Road, Mysuru Road and Hosur Road. Traffic police anticipate the rush to surpass the congestion witnessed during the recent Dasara holidays.In anticipation of a massive surge in vehicular flow, authorities are gearing up for a two-day traffic management exercise, with additional personnel being deployed at critical junctions and bottlenecks. From as early as Friday morning, cops will focus on clearing illegal parking along major stretches, including Yeshwantpur, Kengeri and Hosur Main Road, to ensure smoother traffic movement and maintain lane discipline. Personnel deployment at key choke points is expected to be increased threefold to tackle the rush.The biggest challenge, however, is expected to unfold from Friday evening, when thousands of KSRTC and private buses begin ferrying passengers out of the city in different directions. “The real challenge begins when more buses — both KSRTC and private — start leaving Bengaluru in different directions from the evening. This time, the rush will be more than that during Dasara as more people will celebrate Deepavali. They will travel to hometowns across north and central Karnataka, Mysuru and coastal Karnataka,” a senior traffic police officer said.Police estimate that more than 5,000 long-distance buses could leave the city on Friday evening and night alone. Goraguntepalya junction, a major transit point for buses heading towards north, central and coastal Karnataka, is expected to bear the brunt. As against the usual daily movement of 600 to 800 buses, the number is expected to be 2,500 to 3,000.Congestion is also likely to spill over to the Kempegowda International Airport (KIA) route, adding to the pressure on Bengaluru’s already stretched road network. Police have advised commuters to avoid major bottlenecks such as Goraguntepalya during peak night hours and plan their journeys accordingly.Haunting Dasara gridlockTraffic officials are keen to avoid a repeat of the nightmarish gridlock witnessed during the Dasara holiday exodus, when thousands of vehicles and long-distance buses crawled towards the city’s outskirts. During the rush, several buses took 5-6 hours just to exit Bengaluru, with traffic congestion continuing until nearly 2.30am.The Goraguntepalya-Tumakuru Road stretch was one of the worst bottlenecks. Buses leaving Majestic were held up for 3-4 hours on the relatively short stretch leading to Goraguntepalya. Commuters reported that the journey from Orion Mall to Govardhan Theatre took over 2.5 hours, while several buses reached Nagasandra only around 2am!
