Traffic jams continue for second day in Ghaziabad

The woes of commuters in the city continued on Sunday as several major roads like GT Road at Mohan Nagar and a stretch of the Delhi-Meerut Expressway near Lal Kuan witnessed long hours of traffic jams due to waterlogging

The woes of commuters in the city continued on Sunday as several major roads like GT Road at Mohan Nagar and a stretch of the Delhi-Meerut Expressway near Lal Kuan witnessed long hours of traffic jams due to waterlogging. The situation has prevailed in the city since Saturday morning after heavy rains that continued on Sunday morning.

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“I had to travel from Karhera to my home at Rajendra Nagar, a distance of about 4km that usually takes 10-15 minutes. But, the long jams created a bottleneck near Mohan Nagar intersection, and it took me more than an hour to reach home,” said Jatin Kumar, a resident of Rajendra Nagar.

He said that long jams were also witnessed on GT Road and at the underpass near Sahibabad railway station.

Similarly, the Delhi-Meerut Expressway stretch at Lal Kuan, which is witnessing the construction of 16-lane rail over bridge (ROB) near ABES College, witnessed a chaotic traffic situation on Sunday.

“I generally travel about 7km to Kavi Nagar from Vijay Nagar. It took me about two hours to cross the ROB and almost an hour when I travelled back home on my motorcycle. The waterlogging and muck on the road created problems for the commuters,” said Pradeep Kumar, a Vijay Nagar resident.

Gauging the situation, officials of the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) said that they temporarily opened up four new lanes of the under construction ROB in order to ease the traffic.

“Earlier, there were four lanes. With the four more lanes opened temporarily, the commuters now have four lanes to go to Delhi and four others to reach Ghaziabad,” said an NHAI officer requesting anonymity.

Ramanand Kushwaha, superintendent of police (traffic), said that all the personnel of the traffic police as well as police post in-charges were helping out in managing the traffic situation.

“The traffic jams on Sunday were a result of waterlogging that is getting cleared. The NHAI temporarily opened up new lanes in order to ease traffic situation. Our personnel were deployed at major stretches on Sunday as well to manage the traffic,” he added.

The Ghaziabad municipal corporation on Saturday identified 13 heavily waterlogged areas and deployed a team of three officers for each area for round the clock monitoring of the situation. They were tasked to monitor and get cleared the waterlogged areas.

Despite repeated attempts, municipal commissioner MS Tanwar could not be contacted on Sunday for his comments.

Meanwhile, the NHAI officials said that the six new lanes of the ROB are likely to be opened by August 30 this year.

“We have completed the load testing of the new lanes. The six new lanes will be opened up officially by August 30. This will give 10 lanes to commuters and ease up pressure,” said Mudit Garg, project director of NHAI.