Traffic snarls in Delhi on Dhanteras

Most of these jams, the traffic police said, were reported near Metro stations and popular markets, forcing them to deploy their entire traffic staff on the streets, unlike regular days when around 75% officers are out.

Snarls dogged several parts of the national capital on Friday, a day ahead of Diwali, with traffic police officers saying vehicular traffic went up 50% as compared to usual.

Traffic snarl at ITO in New Delhi. (Amal KS/ Hindustan Times)

Most of these jams, the traffic police said, were reported near Metro stations and popular markets, forcing them to deploy their entire traffic staff on the streets, unlike regular days when around 75% officers are out.

Taj Hassan, special commissioner of Delhi Traffic Police, said he estimated the vehicular increase on the city’s roads to be almost 50% on Thursday and Friday. He added that the traffic situation on Friday, when Dhanteras was celebrated, was marginally better than Thursday and commuters should expect relatively lesser traffic on Saturday.

Delhi Metro services to be available till 10pm on Diwali

The officer said that traffic police personnel were deployed at all choke points and insisted that the vehicular movement was slow rather than completely chock-a-block.

However, some commuters complained that police personnel were missing from several bottlenecked stretches and that several traffic signals were not working. Ankur Singh tweeted the traffic police to complain about such a situation in Dwarka Mod, where he said neither was the traffic signal was functioning, nor were police officers around.

A 26-year-old resident of South Delhi’s CR Park, who did not wish to be named, said it took him over 25 minutes to cross the Lala Lajpat Rai Road stretch from Moolchand till Oberoi Hotel, on his way to office in Connaught Place.

“It usually takes me no more than 10-12 minutes to cross that stretch. Initially, I thought the traffic was due to police barricades usually placed near the Lajpat Nagar Metro station, but that was not the case on Friday,” he said.

Commuters also complained about people parking their cars on the roadsides near popular markets and shopkeepers spreading out on the roads to do the festive business.

This year’s pre-Diwali pollution levels worst since 2018 in Noida, G Noida and Ghaziabad

“Festivities can’t mean parking on roads,”Pradeep Sachdeva, a Twitter user who was stuck in a jam between Madhuban Chowk and Netaji Subhash Place, wrote to the traffic police.

The traffic police said that they received most calls of traffic jams from places such as Barapulla Flyover, Aurobindo Marg, Sarita Vihar, Chhatarapur, Keshavpuram, Shakarpur, Dwarka Mod, etc

“The next bad traffic situation we are preparing for is during Chhath (on November 20). But since there are a lot of restrictions due to Covid-19, hopefully there will be less jams,” said Hassan.