Friday frenzy, festive rush put brakes on Delhi traffic

In Delhi, major snarls were reported at the Delhi-Gurugram border, on Lala Lajpat Rai Road (towards New Delhi), the Ashram intersection, Delhi-Jaipur Expressway (near the airport), the Delhi-Noida Direct flyway, Noida Link Road, Mathura Road, as well as areas around India Gate.

The festive fervour, amped up security checks ahead of Diwali and the usual pre-weekend frenzy combined to give Delhi a major traffic headache on Friday, with unending snarls doubling travel times on some key stretches and keeping commuters stuck on the road for much of the evening.

Vehicles stuck in a traffic jam on Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway on Friday. (PTI)

The traffic mess is only likely to get worse on Saturday, when Dhanteras will be celebrated and hundreds of thousands of commuters are likely to throng markets, even as commuters said that ongoing infrastructure projects across the city only added to the mayhem on Friday. Gurugram too wasn’t spared the traffic trauma, with residents of the city taking an hour to cross the Delhi border.

In Delhi, major snarls were reported at the Delhi-Gurugram border, on Lala Lajpat Rai Road (towards New Delhi), the Ashram intersection, Delhi-Jaipur Expressway (near the airport), the Delhi-Noida Direct flyway, Noida Link Road, Mathura Road, as well as areas around India Gate. Though, traffic on most roads moved significantly slower than usual.

Most roads in the city on Friday evening appeared as deep red streaks on major online monitoring services, including Google Maps and the TomTom live traffic index.

Most roads in the city on Friday evening appeared as deep red streaks on major online monitoring services, including Google Maps and the TomTom live traffic index.

According to the latter, for instance, traffic congestion across the city during the rush hour was 13% worse than usual. The index, which monitors traffic in real-time in over 400 major cities across the world, found that commuters during the evening rush hour on Friday took at least 88% longer to reach their destinations, as compared to non-congested roads. So, a trip that usually takes 30 minutes took around 56 minutes on Friday evening.

Motorists, stuck in jams much longer than usual, vented their anger on social media, imploring the Delhi traffic police to step in and ease the congestion.

Some social media users also uploaded videos and photographs of jams in the city.

A Twitter user, Deepak Gairola, posted drawing the traffic police’s attention towards heavy traffic on the Sarita Vihar-Kalindi Kunj stretch, on which, he claimed, he was stuck for 30 minutes.

Shivender Bhardwaj, another Twitter user, said, “@dtptrafficSir....in an enroute journey from Dhaula Kuan to Delhi Cantt...stuck in traffic from last hour...Requesting you to kindly handle the situation.”

A driver who works with an online electric cab-hailing service said the two-kilometre trip between the Nehru Place and Chirag Delhi crossings in south Delhi took him 20 minutes around 3pm on Friday afternoon.

Officers of the Delhi traffic police attributed the traffic jams to the increased vehicular volume ahead of Dhanteras and Diwali, apart from damaged roads and ongoing construction work.

Delhi’s perennial parking space crunch, meanwhile, forced people to leave their vehicles on roadsides, crippling movement, especially around major shopping hubs, like Connaught Place, Lajpat Nagar, Sarojini Nagar, Karol Bagh, Laxmi Nagar, Kamla Nagar, Sadar Bazaar, Chandni Chowk, and Pitampura, said traffic police officers.

“All roads leading to major shopping hubs are seeing heavy traffic. Traffic police personnel are being actively deployed to tackle the situation,” said deputy commissioner of police (traffic, south) Ankit Chauhan.

Delhi has also been put on high-alert in view of inputs received regarding potential security threats, with checks intensified at crowded public places and along the city’s borders. Random checks on vehicles also kept traffic glacial in some parts, said the police.

Traffic police officers in Gurugram said they were coordinating with their Delhi counterparts to regulate increased traffic pressure on NH-48 during peak hours.

Virender Singh Sangwan, deputy commissioner of police (traffic), said, “The traffic congestion near Mahipalpur resulted in the snarl upto Sirhaul,” adding that 3,000 personnel are out on the streets to free movement up.