E-Paper
Cable work, manual traffic management results in 4-km traffic snarl on Dwarka Link Road
Gurugram: Commuters heading towards Delhi on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway faced heavy congestion due to ongoing cable laying work and manual traffic management at the Dwarka Link Road on Monday morning
Gurugram: Commuters heading towards Delhi on the Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway faced heavy congestion due to ongoing cable laying work and manual traffic management at the Dwarka Link Road on Monday morning.
The snarl stretched for 4.5 km -- till Sirhaul toll -- during the peak traffic hours between 8 am and 11 am, taking commuters more than 30 minutes to cross the stretch. Around 4 lakh vehicles cross the Sirhaul toll on a weekday.
While Delhi traffic police has been regularly issuing alerts on social media since March 19, cautioning commuters to avoid the stretch till May 15 due to the ongoing cable laying work by Delhi Transco Limited, officials suspect the removal of jersey barriers might have led to an increase in congestion on Monday.
Due to the ongoing work, commuters coming from Bijwasan and Dwarka no longer have access to the service lanes of the expressway to head towards the Indira Gandhi International (IGI) Airport, Mahipalpur, or for taking a U-turn below the Mahipalpur flyover to head towards Gurugram.
Instead, they have to converge with the traffic coming from Gurugram on the main carriageway of NH-48 to head towards any of these directions.
“Only on the first day of the work had Delhi traffic police officials managed traffic manually. Due to the severity of congestion, from the next day onwards, they had placed jersey barriers at an angle, leaving vehicles travelling from Dwarka and Bijwasan with a dedicated lane of the carriageway to join NH-48. On Monday morning, however, Delhi traffic police removed the jersey barriers and reverted to manual management of traffic,” said an official at the control room of National Highways Authority of India (NHAI).
The official quoted above said that instead of the usual converging of traffic, Delhi traffic police officials either allowed vehicles travelling from Dwarka and Bijwasan passage or those travelling on the expressway from Gurugram at intervals, resulting in a heavy snarl.
While Delhi traffic police officials were unavailable for comment, DCP (traffic) DK Bhardwaj of the Gurugram police said that he will speak to Delhi traffic police on Tuesday morning regarding the matter. “With traffic extending till Gurugram on Monday, we will take stock on the matter from Delhi traffic police on Tuesday to determine the date till the work at Dwarka Link Road is likely to continue and the traffic management measures taken for it. Accordingly, we will issue an alert of our own for Gurugram residents as well,” said Bhardwaj.
Daily commuters said that over the past three weeks the congestion was usually less than two kilometres long --between Samalka and Mahipalpur flyover -- though it was longer on Monday.
“Over the last three weeks, the congestion was limited till Samalka. However, today (Monday) it was more severe. The stretch has been taking me 10 minutes to cross since the work began, however, it took me nearly 30 minutes today. Instead of continuous moving traffic, due to manual traffic management, vehicle movement was stationary for two to three-minute intervals, which resulted in a four-kilometre vehicle queue,” said Sahil Bhalla, a resident of Panchsheel Park in Delhi.
