Hyderabad: Traffic came to a standstill on the Gachibowli Flyover after the heavy downpour on Tuesday. Traffic under the flyover was also slow-moving until the evening.
IT employees who regularly travel through the Gachibowli-Biodiversity stretch were left looking for alternative routes that were less jammed.
Normally, it takes only ten minutes to cross this stretch, but on Tuesday afternoon, commuters were stuck there for over half an hour. The build-up of traffic was caused by waterlogging outside the petrol bunk area.
Adding to the woes of commuters, the Gachibowli-Biodiversity stretch was closed by the Cyberabad traffic police from 4 pm onwards for drain repair works. The Cyberabad Traffic Police advised all IT employees to avoid the Gachibowli-Biodiversity road until the engineers found a solution to the waterlogging. This left many commuters annoyed and irate.
Vikrant Gill, an IT professional, said, “There was a huge traffic jam in front of Care Hospital; it took me almost 20 minutes to clear that stretch. The traffic jam was really scary. Most of my colleagues finished their work by 5 pm and left for home as heavy rainfall had been forecasted for the evening. Some of them even worked from home out of fear of the rain.”
Within the limits of Hyderabad city, major traffic jams were witnessed in areas such as Banjara Hills and the Jubilee Hills-Madhapur corridor because of waterlogging at KBR Park.
Customers had to shell out large amounts in the form of cab fares to get across the city. Uber was charging over Rs 1,000 for a distance of 10 km.
Nishant Sharma, a resident of Kondapur, began looking for a cab at 9.30 pm on Monday night. He ended up paying Rs 800 to get back home from Nampally.
“I got an Uber cab at 10.30 pm, after a long wait. I paid Rs 800 to get from Nampally to Kondapur. I was forced to pay that much because I had only 10 percent of battery left on my phone and I was scared after hearing about the jam-packed roads everywhere. I had no other option.
Instead of helping people, Uber was concentrating on making money and prospering through our hard times,” he said.
