Festive shoppers caught in a 6km traffic jam on Gurugram e-way

NEW DELHI: A massive traffic snarl stretching for six kilometres on Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway was witnessed on Monday evening as thousands of commuters stepped out to shop for Diwali and Dhanteras. The jam also led to arteries like Sardar Patel Marg and Outer Ring Road getting choked.
Police said the root cause of the jam was an under-construction underpass near Mahipalpur as it occupies almost two lanes of the road leaving little space for vehicles to move on both sides. The second bottleneck was identified at the toll plaza at the Delhi-Gurgaon border.

Joint commissioner (traffic) Alok Kumar said additional personnel were deployed to control the traffic. “We are coordinating with our counterparts in Gurgaon. The huge volume of vehicles due to the festive rush has been resulting in the jams,” he added.

In Gurgaon, the snarls stretched till IFFCO Chowk bringing traffic to a standstill. Commuters heading towards the airport were stuck for nearly two hours. Gurgaon officialssaid that traffic on the expressway started building up as early as 4.30pm and gradually the tailback stretched till Atlas Chowk and beyond. Thousands of commuters were caught in the jam that improved significantly by about 9pm. However, traffic continued to be slow between Rajokri flyover and Mahipalpur.

Sanjay Sharma, a commuter heading towards central Delhi, said, “Mondays are usually bad and knowing it was Dhanteras I started from my office at 4.30pm. However, I still got caught in the huge snarls at the Delhi-Gurgaon border.”