Many vehicles had to wait for over two hours in bumper-to-bumper traffic

Mysore/Mysuru: It will be a daunting task for the Traffic Police to regulate the long line of VIPs and Government officers from the Centre and State who are scheduled to arrive in Mysuru by road from Bengaluru and other places on the International Day of Yoga on June 21 as there are bound to be traffic bottlenecks at the entry points to the city, especially from Bengaluru.

A sample of the things to come was witnessed at Manipal Hospital Junction (formerly Columbia Asia Junction) yesterday where many vehicles were stranded on the road and some had to wait for more than two hours to cross the junction.

As it was a Sunday yesterday, along with the regular vehicles and trucks that commute on both sides of the road, there were vehicles of tourists who were coming and returning.

The Police had a tough time regulating the crowd from morning till late in the evening and the result was traffic had piled up for about two to three kilometres on all the four sides of the road.

On many occasions all throughout the day, the line of vehicles stretched on both sides of the road and it was impossible to regulate the traffic with the automatic signal lights.

Sensing this, the Traffic Police from Narasimharaja (NR) Traffic Police Station resorted to manually operate the signal lights with four to five Policemen taking turns operating the signals. Those vehicles that had a smooth journey at many stretches of the ongoing 10-lane Mysuru-Bengaluru Highway were stuck at the Manipal Hospital junction and had to patiently await traffic clearance.