New Delhi, Sep 11 (Inditop.com) Serpentine queues of vehicles, non-functional traffic signals and vehicle breakdowns – similar disturbing scenes were played out once again across Delhi roads Friday after two days of continuous rainfall.
The downpour, one of the heaviest this season, caused flooding in low-lying areas and uprooted trees. And this with dysfunctional traffic lights led to huge traffic snarls, leaving commuters harried. Hundreds of school children were caught up for hours on end on chaotic roads.
At many places the traffic was crawling at a speed of two kilometres an hour.
“Slow traffic moment was reported from places in Okhla in south Delhi, Anand Vihar in east Delhi, Wazirabad, Dhaula Kuan and Nand Nagri. Traffic policemen were deployed at all red lights to manage the traffic,” said a senior Delhi Traffic official.
But he blamed the poor roads for the mess. “Many roads having potholes also affected the smooth flow of traffic in certain parts of the city.”
The chaos once again showed the lack of preparedness of civic authorities to restore normalcy to Delhi’s roads as the heavy rainfall disrupted normal life.
Commuters who set off for their offices in the morning had to battle waterlogged roads, non-functional traffic signals, vehicle breakdowns and never-ending queues of cars, buses, two-wheelers and auto-rickshaws. Disorder reigned on the streets almost throughout the morning.
“It took me three hours and 45 minutes to cover a distance of eight kilometres from my home in Palam (west Delhi) to my office in R.K. Puram in a car,” said Nishant Sharma.
For Nikita Jain, who commutes between Gurgaon and Delhi, the traffic woes were unending.
“It took me some 45 minutes to reach Delhi from Gurgaon. However, to cross the next two kilometres it took some two-and-a-half hours. People were actually standing out of their cars and chatting,” Jain added.
On Thursday, Delhi recorded 112 mm of rain, the heaviest rainfall of the month. This has resulted in the mercury plummeting with the maximum temperature hovering at 25.9 degrees Celsius and the minimum at 24.0 degrees Celsius.
The meteorological department, however, predicted that the rainfall will start “declining” from Saturday.
“The rainfall will start declining from tomorrow (Saturday). The cyclonic condition over Madhya Pradesh has started weakening, which will lead to the decline in the rainfall,” a Met department official told Inditop.
