As the monsoon sets in, long stretches of roads are still in a state of disrepair in Hyderabad affecting traffic flow and creating potential danger zones during heavy rains. Traffic is reduced to a crawl through the day during peak hours. The evening peak hour, with almost every establishment shutting down, is a test of patience, skill and auditory threshold. “It took me 31 minutes to deliver an order from Banjara Hills to Hyderguda, a distance of 6.5 km. Usually it takes only 12 to 14 minutes,” said Md Khaleel Baig, a food-delivery executive about the evening rush hour.
“It is because of the PVNR Expressway we could reach home in 45 minutes. We are no longer able to use the Masab Tank flyover as it is packed through the day,” said another regular commuter about the traffic on the Jyothi Nagar-Rythu Bazaar stretch of road. Even at 7.15 on Thursday evening, large stretches of roads were in the red on real time online traffic maps.
Near Raidurgam police station, it is the electricity department that has dug up a trench creating a block to traffic flowing towards Biodiversity Junction. Below the PVNR Expressway there is a gas pipeline company that has dug up trenches to lay a pipeline. The work had been going on from the beginning of summer and shows no end in sight.
At Toli Chowki near Sabza Colony, the location of annual flooding in the western part of Hyderabad, the road has been dug up on one side for drinking water pipeline.
“This drinking water pipeline work will get done in three days,” says the supervisor at the site near Toli Chowki about the 1400-mm pipeline.
The work has been going on for the past few weeks and before that, box girders were laid by another utility.
In Nalanda Nagar, the road has been dug up for laying a sewerage line.
In Banjara Hills, near a well-known mall, work is in full swing on a foot-over-bridge.
While the FOB might become very useful in future, currently motorists can see the massive crater that has been there for the past two months. Beside the Biodiversity Junction flyover, sewage flows on the road. What is likely to happen once it rains is easy to figure out.