VIPs make mere mortals fume

BANGALORE: At 11 am and 6 pm every day, Airport Road rush hour traffic is at its worst. But on Friday, this bustling road looked as if it was bandh-hit.
Traffic between Airport and Raj Bhavan was stopped. The Airport Road, Indiranagar 100 Feet, Trinity Circle, M G Road and CTO Junction were all empty, except for cops in white who were manning them.
On Airport Road, vehicles coming from Marathhalli to the city were stopped at Airport Junction.All along, vehicles stood still on cross-roads including at Ulsoor, Magrath Road, Victoria Road and Cubbon Road. For over an hour, the city was gridlocked. It took another two hours for normalcy to be restored. The situation was repeated in the evening.
Three VVIP visits — PM Manmohan Singh, finance minister P Chidambaram and agriculture minister Sharad Pawar — threw city traffic out of gear. As usual, the common man bore its brunt. The PM and the two Union ministers landed at Bangalore airport at 11.40 am and the arterial roads were cleared for their convoys. For motorists, a long wait was on the cards.
The more traffic police manage VIP movement with scarce resources, the less they think of feasible ways of managing traffic, muttered a motorist.
While the stretch was closed for an hour, the backlash was heavy. It took over two hours for traffic to clear. The evening drizzle only made matters worse. "There was a proposal to convoy VVIPs in a small chopper from the airport. In fact, a few more places, IISc and Raj Bhavan, can be identified and helipads be laid there. We are not taking up such solutions by manufacturing dismal ways of handling traffic," said police officials.