Bengaluru’s school traffic is leaving buses, residents and students stranded for prolonged periods, with congestion on State Highway 35 near Dommasandra Circle in East Bengaluru turning the daily journey to and from school into a recurring ordeal.
The Hindu reported that vehicles, including school buses, were stuck in traffic on the highway near Varthur. The congestion has affected children travelling home after classes, with delays creating difficulties inside buses as well as on the road.
Kashvee, a Grade 8 student at a school near Dommasandra Circle, described helping a nine-year-old boy who was distressed after the bus remained stuck at the same point for about 20 minutes. According to her account, the child had not told the other students that he needed to use the restroom because he expected to reach home on time.
The incident illustrates how traffic congestion around Bengaluru’s schools is affecting more than journey times. School buses operating in already crowded corridors must accommodate fixed school schedules, while children and accompanying adults remain dependent on road conditions that can change sharply during peak hours.
The problem is being reported across areas where schools and residential development share narrow or heavily used road corridors. Vehicles serving schools are required to enter and leave these areas during concentrated time windows, adding to congestion created by regular commuter traffic and other heavy vehicles.
The report identified State Highway 35, particularly the stretch near Varthur and Dommasandra Circle, as one location where the disruption has become visible. School buses and other vehicles were shown caught in slow-moving traffic, with residents and road users facing the same bottlenecks.
The congestion also affects the reliability of school transport. A delay that appears limited at one junction can extend the overall trip for children travelling across multiple neighbourhoods. For families, this can make arrival and return times difficult to predict; for schools, it can complicate the coordination of buses and student dispersal.
The response under discussion includes micro-planning around school traffic and restrictions on heavier vehicles, according to the report. Such measures would focus on managing traffic movements at the locations and times when school-related demand is highest rather than treating congestion as a problem limited to individual bus operators.
The report’s account places the issue within a wider challenge for Bengaluru: schools, housing and through-traffic increasingly share the same road space, while the experience of congestion is felt most directly by people who cannot alter their travel time or route. In this case, children on school buses remained exposed to delays even though their journeys were scheduled around fixed school timings.
The immediate next steps are expected to centre on local traffic management, micro-planning around affected school corridors and consideration of heavier-vehicle restrictions. The effectiveness of those measures will depend on how they are implemented on routes such as State Highway 35 and whether they reduce delays during school travel periods.
