Festive shopping, infrastructure work on key roads, traffic restrictions for VIP movements and heightened security deployment ahead of protests combined to bring traffic across Delhi to a grinding halt on Wednesday, with central and south Delhi among the worst-hit areas.
“I left my office near Parliament Street around 5.30pm and it usually takes me 45 minutes to reach my Taimoor Nagar residence. The traffic situation is so bad today that it will take me nearly one and a half hours to reach home,” said Amarnath Mehta, 48, a government employee stuck near the Prithviraj Road-Shahjahan Road intersection. “Footfall at key markets such as Khan Market, Connaught Place, Lajpat Nagar, Sarojini Nagar and Karol Bagh has increased multifold due to festival shopping.
The parking space crunch, leading to roadside parking, is also causing traffic jams, especially around major shopping hubs,” a traffic police officer from the southern range said, requesting anonymity. Shiv Dayal, travelling from Hauz Khas towards Sukhdev Vihar, said construction work near the Modi Mill flyover had caused snarls on the Outer Ring Road for several days, but Wednesday’s congestion was considerably worse. “The situation is extremely bad today, especially on stretches near Greater Kailash and between Nehru Place and Sukhdev Vihar,” he said.
Keeping in view the festive rush and the proposed November 1 rally by opposition parties at Ramlila Maidan, we have decided to increase the number of traffic personnel on streets,” the officer said, requesting anonymity.
An officer from the New Delhi traffic range, which oversees central Delhi, said multiple VIP movements had required vehicles to be stopped briefly at different intersections. “Today, we handled multiple VIP movements for which vehicles were briefly stopped at different intersections.
