NEW DELHI: Agony and ecstasy — that’s always the story of rains in Delhi. After a beastly period of high day temperatures worsened by high humidity, the city heaved a sigh of relief when the skies opened up on Thursday morning.
Soon enough, the happiness gave way to exasperation as the streets became clogged with vehicles impeded by waterlogging. There were sections on the Mehrauli-Badarpur Road where push carts charged people to be ferried across the flooded road. As usual, the underpasses were deluged and getting into or out of a Delhi Metro station proved an adventure.
Traffic was shut under the railway underpass in Pul Prahladpur, the city’s new icon of rain woes. The underpass, which gets submerged in heavy rainfall, has already claimed two lives, one last year and one earlier this year. It has overtaken the Minto Bridge underpass in floodwater notoriety, and not surprisingly, the latter wasn’t affected by the precipitation and motorists faced no problems there on Thursday.
The downpour early on a working day left the Delhi-Noida border, Chilla border, UP Gate, Delhi-Gurgaon Road heavily congested. Bumper-to-bumper traffic tried the patience of people on Aurobindo Marg, Mehrauli-Badarpur Road, Outer Ring Road, DND Flyway, even the Barapullah elevated road.
A traffic officer disclosed that 33 calls about waterlogging were received and six about fallen trees. Police did their best, using social media to alert the public about the road conditions and traffic snarls. “We are in touch with the civic authorities and kept informing them about stretches from where complaints of water logging were reported,” said a police officer.
An irritated Rajesh Verma tweeted at around 8pm, “Heavy traffic jam at Dhulsiras Chowk, next to India convention centre. Vehicles have not moved for the last 40 minutes”. Tanmay Kundra posted a video of a massive jam while on the way from AIIMS to Dhaula Kuan at 7.44pm, grumbling, “Stuck in traffic for the last two hours, no traffic police present to clear the traffic.”
Entrepreneur Ishita Kapoor, who left Noida for a meeting at New Friends Colony in south Delhi, said she encountered jams right from the DND Flyway. There was no relief even when she had inched to Ashram. “This is the scenario every time there is monsoon rainfall in the city,” she said. “Driving is so tiring in such circumstance and things are not helped by the innumerable constructions along the roads.”
The traffic police restricted traffic on the Barapullah corridor and though there was some normalcy in the afternoon, the chaos was evident again in the evening peak hours. Traffic movement was restricted at Anand Parbat T-point, Zakhira underpass, and Inderlok too. Passage was halting along Ring Road due to waterlogging and jams. To add to the woes, a truck broke down in south Delhi’s Munirka and caused a gridlock while a bus was almost submerged in the floodwater on the Delhi-Meerut Expressway.
What is more, many people couldn’t step out of Delhi Metro stations due to water accumulation outside. At Nehru Place, commuters desperately requested autorickshaws to risk the deluge and pick them up at the station exit.
