Blocked flanks trigger 6km snarl on VIP Road

KOLKATA: Thousands who travelled along VIP Road had a harrowing time for most part of Monday when the Bidhannagar commissionerate shut down three lanes each on either flank at Sreebhumi that caused a snarl up to 6-km long.
The closure from Sunday evening was meant to test the waters ahead of a more challenging three-month shutdown to construct an underpass at Golaghata. But the experiment left thousands exasperated with some commuters stuck for as long as four hours.


Schoolstudents missed classes, office goers reported late, patients were stuck in ambulances and buses could barely move as the tail of the snarl reached Kaikhali, choking the entire city-bound flank. The previous evening, the jam on the opposite flank had reached Ultadanga despite it being a low-traffic day.


“This is a complete mess. It took over two hours for me to come to Lake Town from Kaikhali,” said Jayanta Chakraborty, who was heading to the city for work. Baguiati resident Surabhi Chowdhury, who was heading to Sealdah to drop her daughter to school, said: “Nothing has been moving on the road. My daughter is late to school and I can’t even turn my car back and head home.”


Facing criticism, the poice forced PWD to dump the plan to shut down six lanes of VIP Road at one go to complete the underpass before the Puja and adopt a more conservative plan of shutting down the road on one flank at atime. “We have scrapped the experiment and are putting in place a new traffic plan,” said Amit Javalgi, the deputy commissioner (headquarter) of Bidhannagar City Police.


Another officer said the revised plan would ensure that city-bound traffic had four-five lanes available in the morning and traffic in reverse direction as many lanes in the evening. “We have decided to complete the underpass in two phases. The airport-bound flank will first be closed to traffic. But the service road will remain open. From late afternoon, one half of the city-bound flank will also be thrown open for airport-bound traffic,” said a senior PWD official.


Once the airport-bound portion of the underpass is ready, PWD will shift to the city-bound flank and will replicate the same format. Work on the underpass will commence on Wednesday or Thursday.