New Delhi: The traffic movement in the national capital was affected due to continuous rains leading to waterlogging in some areas and protest by anganwadi workers in the Central Delhi.
Commuters had a harrowing time as vehicular traffic crawled on the waterlogged roads after the city received 13.3 mm rainfall during the last 24-hour.
As many as 150 calls about traffic snarls were received by the Delhi Traffic Police control room. Many of the calls were from south, outer and northwest Delhi.
Piyush Bhardwaj, a civil engineer, said, “Since the roads were flooded, the traffic moved at a snail’s pace. To add to the woes, the cab aggregators applied peak charges during the rains. I had to pay Rs 50 extra for a cab ride between Naraina and Connaught Place.”
Meeta Jha, a media professional said, “While driving from Dwarka to the Lutyens’ Delhi, I encountered major traffic snarls. I took an hour extra to reach my destination.”
The situation was further aggravated as 1,500 women anganwadi members staged a protest in the central Delhi at Rajghat and the police had to divert traffic through the Ring Road, said a senior police official.
According to a senior traffic police officer, additional staff were deployed to manage the situation.
As commuters took to microblogging site Twitter to share their traffic woes, Delhi police’s official handle sent out regular tweets updating them on the waterlogged roads and stretches.
Key stretches in south Delhi witnessed mile-long jams.
People had a difficult time navigating through the stretch between IIT-Delhi and Munirka, areas like Moti Bagh, Chirag Dilli, Saket, South Extension, Yusuf Sarai, Lodhi Road.
Traffic was affected on the stretch between Mangolpuri D block and Peeragarhi, area around Moti Bagh Chowk and near the Dhaula Kuan flyover, Sangam Vihar, Greater Kailash, Dilshad Garden and Prahladpur due to waterlogging, police said.
People were stuck in jams for hours at major intersections like Ashram Chowk, Britannia Chowk, Kashmere Gate, ITO, Mukarba Chowk, Mehrauli-Badarpur road, Mehrauli- Gurgaon road.
With technical glitches crippling the metro services twice during the day, people faced a lot of trouble commuting on the last working day of the week.
Trains on violet line crawled during the morning rush hours due to a major signal failure while services on blue line remained affected for over two hours due to glitch in OHE (overhead electrification) wire near the Karol Bagh metro station around 2.40 pm.
—PTI