Varthur-Sarjapur road joins ORR as one of Bengaluru’s most congested stretches
Varthur-Sarjapur Road emerges as one of Bengaluru's most congested routes, highlighting severe infrastructure and traffic management issues.
Updated - September 19, 2026 11:16 pm IST - Bengaluru
A senior traffic police officer said that the stretch between Varthur Kodi and Sarjapur Road has joined the 17.1-km Outer Ring Road stretch between Silk Board junction and K.R. Puram Metro as one of the most congested roads in the city. | Photo Credit: ALLEN EGENUSE J.
A senior traffic police officer said that the stretch between Varthur Kodi and Sarjapur Road has joined the 17.1-km Outer Ring Road stretch between Silk Board junction and K.R. Puram Metro as one of the most congested roads in the city. | Photo Credit: ALLEN EGENUSE J.
A senior traffic police officer said that the stretch between Varthur Kodi and Sarjapur Road has joined the 17.1-km Outer Ring Road stretch between Silk Board junction and K.R. Puram Metro as one of the most congested roads in the city. | Photo Credit: ALLEN EGENUSE J.
A senior traffic police officer said that the stretch between Varthur Kodi and Sarjapur Road has joined the 17.1-km Outer Ring Road stretch between Silk Board junction and K.R. Puram Metro as one of the most congested roads in the city. | Photo Credit: ALLEN EGENUSE J.
For a commuter driving the nine-km stretch of State Highway-35 between Varthur Kodi and Sarjapur-Ambalipura Road, the journey is an exercise in navigating one hurdle after another. Open drains run alongside the road, mounds of soil occupy non-existent footpaths, thick clouds of dust induce bouts of coughing, and commuters are forced to constantly manoeuvre around potholes along this busy stretch of east Bengaluru.
While the recent incident of schoolchildren struggling in buses for hours exposed the everyday ordeal of commuters in the locality amid crumbling road infrastructure, a recent Bengaluru Traffic Police analysis of congestion has revealed that this State Highway is now among the city’s most congested stretches.
A senior traffic police officer confirmed to The Hindu that this stretch (between Varthur Kodi and Sarjapur Road) has joined the 17.1-km Outer Ring Road (ORR) stretch between Silk Board junction and K.R. Puram Metro as one of the most congested roads in the city. What’s more? On several days, the congestion on SH-35 has surpassed that on the ORR, according to the officer.
“When the congestion data is compiled, it is not just the main corridor whose traffic volume is considered. Even the connecting roads are counted to draw the final congestion length,” the officer explained. “As even the smaller roads are clogged at all points in a day and movement is slowed down, the travel time in the area has shot up multifold. This has led to large volumes on other roads,” he explained.
Explaining why it is overtaking the ORR, the officer said that the ORR stretch witnesses traffic during peak hours, while on weekends it is non-existent. Unlike the ORR, traffic is persistent on SH-35 throughout the day, which makes it notorious.
The locality, which falls under the Mahadevapura Assembly constituency, hosts scores of apartment complexes and more than 20 top schools, making it a busy residential area that also has a mix of tech companies coming up.
Narendra Rao, resident of Gunjur village, puts it like this: “While there are skyscraping apartment complexes, with thousands of vehicles owned by those apartment dwellers, the road infrastructure is very limited. Roads that exist are extremely narrow and incapable of holding the growing vehicle numbers.”
The entire nine-km stretch, barring a few kilometres closer to Sarjapur Road, is dotted with large craters, and at some junctions, such as the Rama Temple near Gunjur Bus Stop, there are no signs of a road.
The nine-km stretch predominantly has three choke points: the junction at Varthur Police Station, the Gunjur-Mugulur Road junction, and the point near the Muthasandra Main Road cross near Varthur Lake. At all these junctions, there are no traffic signals, and vehicle flow is manually managed by traffic police officers and local residents throughout the day.
Prasanna Bhat, Varthur resident who works as a traffic volunteer, explained that the highway is a crucial connecting link in the eastern outskirts and that all heavy vehicles use the stretch. This, coupled with hundreds of school buses and local vehicles, makes the stretch a high-density road.
“With civic works ongoing and bad road conditions, vehicle movement is slow, which naturally creates congestion,” he said. However, what makes it worse is that the slow-moving traffic on this stretch has a ripple effect on the connecting stretches.
