Now Reading: Varthur residents leave 5 hours early to catch flights
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Varthur residents leave 5 hours early to catch flights
Residents of Varthur and Gunjur in East Bengaluru are leaving home up to five hours before their flight departures because of severe traffic congestion on the SH-35 Varthur-Gunjur-Kadugodi stretch. A family from Gunjur left at 3pm for a 7pm flight to Visakhapatnam but missed it after spending nearly two hours covering just four kilometres. They had to spend another Rs 18,000 on tickets for the next day.
Commuters report spending over an hour to travel a few kilometres on the narrow, damaged road, with no reliable peak hour as traffic builds throughout the day. Residents have written to Chief Minister DK Shivakumar and Bengaluru Development Minister Krishna Byre Gowda seeking urgent repairs and congestion relief. For international flights, some families leave home more than six hours in advance, treating the airport journey like a long-distance road trip.
Indian Opinion Analysis
This corridor connects the fast-growing eastern suburbs to the city's only international airport, yet no major road-widening or elevated-corridor project has been completed here despite years of demand. The airport is 35-40 km away, but the key bottleneck is the final stretch before National Highway 44, which has no flyover or bypass for local traffic. The state government's proposed elevated corridor from KR Puram to the airport remains on paper. With the airport handling over 37 million passengers a year, this is not a fringe issue: tens of thousands of families face the same gamble daily. The next signal to watch is whether the CM's office schedules a site visit or allocates funds in the upcoming budget.
Source: timesofindia.indiatimes.com
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