Hyderabad: Drizzle slowed down traffic at various places in the city. During the busy office hours it worsened the situation. Adding to this, the failure of the traffic signal at some places irked commuters on Monday. Almost every part of the city experienced traffic snarls on Monday because of water logging. Most importantly, commuters travelling through main junctions like Kondapur, Cyber tower and JNTU junctions suffered much because, while it normally takes 15 minutes to cross the junctions, on Monday it took nearly half an hour.
Though there are monsoon teams on paper, there were no signs of them on the ground during the rains. B. Chiranjeevi, a private company employee who was travelling from Raheja Mindspace to JNTU in the afternoon, noticed that all the three lights were blinking at the White Field junction. He said “Commuters were clueless about what to do. The traffic was jammed for half an hour. There were no policemen on duty at around 1.40 pm in the afternoon on Monday.”
Another commuter under the condition of anonymity said, “It has been a common sight at most of the signals after these electronic signals were installed. Also, the directional signals adopted are really confusing at most of the places. Had they thought of it prior to installation, it would have been better.” However G. Raj Gopal Reddy, Traffic Inspector of Madhapur, denied any traffic jam at the junction and said “There has been some technical problem in the traffic signal for the past four days. We have informed the authorities concerned. But we deployed our traffic constable at the junction to see that there is no traffic jam.”
It is better to avoid two wheeler ride during rains, suggested a road safety expert, Vinod Kumar Kanumala of the Indian Federation of Road Safety. He said, “The GHMC has totally failed in maintaining roads. Potholes and degraded road conditions are one of the major reasons for the slow movement of traffic. Water logging is adding to the woes.”
