Massive snarls choke Delhi-Gurugram stretch amid festive rush

NEW DELHI: Massive snarls choked the Delhi-Gurugram stretch on Monday evening as thousands of commuters stepped out to shop for Diwali and Dhanteras. The snarls stretched for nearly 6kms into Gurugram while arteries like the Sardar Patel Marg and Outer Ring Road were choked in Delh, due to the massive snarl.

Cops say that the construction of an underpass near Mahipalpur has been a major bottleneck that has occupied almost two lanes of the road leaving one and a half lane for vehicles on both sides.

The second bottleneck was identified at the toll plaza at the Delhi Gurugram border.

Joint commissioner (traffic) Alok Kumar said that additional personnel have been deployed to control the traffic. "We are coordinating with our counterparts in Gurugram to ease out the traffic, but the huge volume due to the festive rush has been resulting in the jams," said Jt CP Alok Kumar.

Sources say traffic near the construction site has been slowed down due to bad conditon of the road. A portion of the stretch has been pushed up due to the construction activities.

In Gurugram, the snarls stretched back to the IFFCO chowk that nearly brought traffic to a standstill. Commuters heading towards the airport too were stuck for nearly two hours.

"We are on the verge of missing our flight due to the snarls," said Ashish Bhargav, who is heading home to Mumbai for Diwali celebrations.

Traffic on the expressway started building up as early as 4.30pm and gradually the tailback stretched uptil Atlas Chowk and beyond. Thousands of commuters were caught in the jam which lasted till about 8.30pm. Among them was Sanjay Sharma who was heading to Central Delhi. "Mondays are usually bad and knowing it was dhanteras I started from my office at 4.30pm but still got caught in the huge pile up at the Delhi-Gurugram border. The traffic was heavy all through till Mahipalpur and was heavy again at Dhaulakuan," he rued.

The Gurugram traffic cops said that the root cause was the under construction underpass on the expressway at Mahipalpur. "There is not much we can do about this traffic jam as the sole reason for this huge jam is at Mahipalpur. The internal roads in Gurugram have little bit of congestion due to dhanteras but there is no tarffic jam anywhere. We are doing our best to keep the traffic moving," said a traffic cop on duty at Shankar Chowk.

The traffic situation improved significantly by 9 pm but moved slowly near between Rajokri flyover and Mahipalpur.