Surprising Traffic Woes

Yesterday was the last day of dasara. Since today is Friday, I didn't expect many people to come into work or much traffic on the roads. Most people would have taken Friday off and enjoyed 6 days vacation time.

Instead, there was a huge amount of traffic on Old Madras Road. It was raining hard all day yesterday at Bangalore, but even that shouldn't have caused so many problems. I spent almost 30 mins to move from 80ft road to BHEL road. The distance is about 100 meters and is usually covered in seconds.

Found that the cops had switched off the traffic signals at the intersection and were trying to control traffic. This is a bad idea. In Bangalore, traffic lights are the only fair way of ensuring that traffic moves. The reason - Timed lights. Cops on the other hand work on the principle of "traffic I see, is the traffic that should move". The problem with this principle is that within minutes there will be jams everywhere.

Deccan Herald has a story on the woes on Old Madras Road. Link

Myopic view of Bangalore