Commuters brave traffic snarls in the city

Tribune News Service

Chandigarh, March 2

Showers accompanied by heavy volume of traffic led to snarl-ups in several parts of the city on Monday morning exposing the traffic management system of the UT traffic police.

Office-goers and parents rushing to drop their wards for board examinations were the worst affected.

Cops turned up only after there was traffic jams at different points on Madhya Marg and Dakshin Marg.

Situation was at its worst between 9 am and 11 am when people are rushing to their workplaces. Commuters on Madhya Marg (from the Sector 17 light point up to the Sector 26 Transport light point) had a tough time reaching their destinations. Things were no different at the Sector 34 Piccadilly roundabout and the Tribune roundabout on Dakshin Marg and the Aroma light point.

Motorists heading for the city from the Panchkula side were caught up in long queues of vehicles.

While the traffic police claimed that the snarl-ups were due to slow movement of traffic due to the rain, commuters blamed it on the ineffectiveness of traffic cops.

Balbir Jaswal, a commuter, said traffic policemen stayed away from roads due to rain. “I could not find any traffic cop on Madhya Marg at around 9.15 am, the time when city roads are the busiest,” he said.

Mallika, another commuter, said ill-preparedness of the traffic police was exposed due to rain. It seemed that the traffic police have no plans for regulating traffic on a rainy day.

Waterlogging

Drains at a few points in the city could not take the huge volume of rainfall in a short period, though most of the points were cleared later.

The situation was awful near intersections in different parts of the city.