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Karnataka CM DK Shivakumar taking the metro highlights Bengaluru's traffic crisis
'I don't want to waste the time of the common man. When a CM travels, there will definitely be a lot of traffic issues. I just travelled about 45-50 minutes in the metro,' said the CM
- PUBLISHED: Sun 5 Jul 2026, 5:00 PM
When billionaire Kris Gopalakrishnan, one of the co-founders of Indian IT giant Infosys, travelled across Bengaluru, he was frustrated that the 31-km-long trip took him about two-and-a-half hours to complete.
He posted on X: “31 km took 2 1/2 hours today. It is only becoming worse. Traffic, condition of roads, and poor discipline.” The post has gone viral on social media, with many comforting him with the fact that it only took two-and-a-half hours.
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"Unfortunately sir, that is still not in the top 10 worse traffic timings,” responded a user. “The horror stories go as far as 3 hours for 5 km during rainy days.” Another user took over two hours for 25 km. “I was naive to assume that driving on weekends would be less stressful," added the user.
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Interestingly, days after he was sworn in as the new chief minister of Karnataka last month, D.K. Shivakumar chose not to inconvenience residents of Bengaluru by opting to travel by ‘Namma Metro,’ the metro train from the legislature to the Silk Institute.
"I don't want to waste the time of the common man,” said Shivakumar. “When a CM travels, there will definitely be a lot of traffic issues. I just travelled about 45-50 minutes in the metro.” His office noted that he took the decision after recognising that using zero-traffic all the way from his Sadashivanagar residence to Kanakapura Road would disrupt traffic movement for the public.
His move followed a public outrage a few days earlier when people experienced horrific traffic conditions because of the movement of the convoy of Karnataka governor Thaawarchand Gehlot at Wind Tunnel junction. One man who was to pick his pregnant wife was shocked at the convoy and sat down at the junction in protest. The video showing him on the middle of the road and arguing with the cops went viral on social media.
Heavy rains of the past few days have also disrupted traffic on one of the city’s busiest metro corridors. Thousands of commuters were stranded last week after a technical fault on the underground section of the Purple Line near the Cubbon Park metro station brought an abrupt halt to metro services during the peak evening hours.
There have been multiple disruptions caused by power supply issues, signal and brake failures that have impacted the Bengaluru Metro’s services.
BJP MP Tejasvi Surya shared a viral video on ‘X’, showing desperate metro rail commuters, including IT professionals, jumping on the back of an open truck to get home following the suspension of metro services. "First-world tech talent. Third-world governance. That is the story of Bengaluru," he noted in his post.
According to Surya, metro disruptions have become alarmingly frequent in India’s IT capital. “And every time the Metro fails, the entire city descends into chaos,” he added. “Cabs disappear. Autos refuse rides. Citizens are stranded.”
