More red than orange or green. That’s been the story of traffic movement in the city over the past few weeks for commuters using the east-west corridor or the southwest-northwest corridor. While commuters are blaming a series of complicated and long U-turns, police officials maintain traffic movement is smooth. While peak hour used to be a time for traffic congestion, now, slow movement of vehicles throughout the day has become the norm.
Earlier, people could take a right turn under the Biodiversity flyover on the Old Bombay Highway while proceeding from Shaikpet. Now, they have to go further ahead take a U-turn and come back. There is no right turn at the junction near IKEA while travelling from Kondapur, and motorists have to go ahead and take the U-turn to go towards Biodiversity Junction. Similar restrictions in traffic movement have been created near the Secretariat, Kondapur, and other locations in the city. Some of the traffic restrictions are due to pipline or flyover works.
“U-turns have been created so that there are no signals and traffic moves smoothly. But if the number of vehicles keeps increasing, traffic movement will slow down. And it has slowed down,” said a traffic police official in Panjagutta. “Some of the slowdown in traffic is when buses take the U-turn. By the time one bus moves, the vehicle pile-up increases,” added the official. VIP movement, including that of the President and Chief Minister, have further acerbated the woes for motorists.
