long trail of vehicles on severely waterlogged roads is evidence enough of a crippled city that Delhi has become during this monsoon season. Yet again on Monday, similar scenes were witnessed all across Delhi with frustrated commuters — late for work, late for appointments, late for school — dejected at the state of affairs with only one thing on their minds: the administration has failed the city.
Be it traffic police that is supposed to regulate the vehicular movement, or municipal corporations that are supposed to ensure there is no waterlogging and are also supposed to maintain roads along with PWD, or it is various other bodies like Delhi Jal Board, power and telecom companies, etc that dig the roads at different places of the city for repair work without ensuring smooth passage of traffic — they have all collectively failed Delhi.
long traffic snarls were witnessed on Monday morning in different parts of the city due to reasons varying from minor rainfall to failure of traffic signals, potholes on roads, waterlogging, caving-in of roads, uprooted trees and so on.
Deepak Malhotra, an IT professional who claims it took him over two hours to reach Gurgaon from Delhi due to traffic jam in Mahipalpur, says that the traffic situation has gone worse in recent times. “There is lack on enforcement of traffic rules. On a busy road, people come from wrong side without any fear of prosecution. There is wrong parking, encroachment of roads by vendors and nobody does anything. Metro work on ring road also affects the traffic but it’s more so due to other arbitrary construction. There are many places where there are no traffic lights, or they don’t work. It seems like no one is doing their job in Delhi these days. And then it’s the people as well who don’t follow traffic rules,” he said.
While traffic crawled at a snail’s pace at Mehrauli-Badarpur Road, Defence Colony Flyover, Aurbindo Marg, Press Enclave Marg, Panchsheel Marg, Ring Road, Mathura Road, Pusa Road and DB Gupta Road, it came to a grinding halt at Mandir Marg leading towards Press Enclave Road due to failed traffic signal at the intersection.
Reports of traffic jams also came from Yamuna Vihar, Gokulpuri, Dwarka Flyover-Delhi Cantonment, lajpat Nagar, Ashram, Paschim Vihar, Rohini and Shahdra.
According to a traffic official, there is a surge in traffic complaints due to civic issues in the last few days. “The graph of civic-related complaints rises during the monsoon season. Due to rain, there are problems like potholes, uprooting of trees, caving-in of roads, water logging etc, which lead to slowdown of traffic,” said the official.
Apart from these, there were also reports of failure of traffic signals from many areas including Okhala, Khajuri Khas-Shastri Park, Jhilmil, Kalyanpuri and Paschim Vihar. In many places, sewer caps were left open which led to traffic snarls.
A resident of Yamuna Vihar claimed that over the last few days, it consistently takes him 1.5 to 2 hours to travel from Bhajanpura to ISBT which normally took him 15-20 minutes. “I am not able to understand the reason because there is no obstruction, traffic personnel are present as well, and yet traffic just crawls. It took two hours today for me to reach ISBT,” he said.
Special Commissioner of Police Dr Muktesh Chander said that while on Monday, there was only regular congestion of traffic, there has been severe traffic congestion in the last few days due to rain.
“There were reports of waterlogging on Sunday, but since most offices are closed on Sunday, the situation remained under control. And today, there’s hardly any report of waterlogging and there is only regular congestion of traffic. However, things have been bad over the last 10 days or so. Whenever it rains, it leads to waterlogging, uprooting of trees and other such problems which leads to severe traffic congestion. And there has been a lot of rain in last 10 days,” he said.
He added that for this problem to be solved, the drainage capacity needs to be increased and water pumps need to be installed in low-lying areas to remove water logging. “And in long term, the slope of the roads needs to be corrected,” he said, admitting that even after the rain there is an increased traffic congestion because of potholes that are created on the road and other obstructions as a result of the rain.