Submerged roads, traffic snarls belie administration's claims that city was monsoon-ready
After days of hot and humid weather, the Capital witnessed heavy rains on Friday, bringing the city to a halt.
With 18.4 mm rainfall recorded at the Safdarjung Observatory, the city was seen immersed in water resulting in hour-long traffic snarls. While it started drizzling around 10 am in most parts of the city, it rained heavily between 5:30 pm and 6 pm which was enough to drown out the tall claims of the AAP government of having adopted measures against waterlogging.
Due to rain, around 11 trees were uprooted leading to blocked roads. A big tree was uprooted on Madhav Rao Scindia Marg near Kerala School in Lutyen's Delhi.
Traffic also crawled on the Ring Road with vehicles piling up in a kilometre-long jam. Both carriageways on the Mehrauli-Badarpur Road had heavy traffic due to massive waterlogging at Vayusenabad.
Meanwhile, the Air Force station has been identified by both the traffic police and the public works department (PWD) year after year as one of the flash points that needs fixing. However, Friday's situation showed that nothing had been done.
"It took me 40 minutes to reach Sarita Vihar from Aurobindo Marg, which is otherwise a 25-minute ride. The government must do something to fix theses stretches, as the same story repeats itself every monsoon," said Rajeev Gupta, a regular commuter.
Vehicles moved bumper to bumper on the carriageway from Kalindi Kunj towards Noida due to breakdown of a Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) bus near Yamuna Bridge.
Another DTC bus broke down in northeast Delhi's Mongolpuri flyover towards Peera Garhi choking the entire traffic movement. Massive traffic jams were also witnessed at ITO (Vikas Marg), RTR flyover, Aurobindo Marg, and Nehru Place, Tilak Bridge, Kahsmere Gate, and Punjabi Bagh.
RTR is the key link connecting to the Indira Gandhi International Airport (IGIA), and vehicles were stuck for around 25-30 minutes at Subrato Park near the Army Research and Referral (RR) Hospital.
Ahead of the monsoon, Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal had said that the city needed a separate body for the cleaning of drains, which becomes a major issue every monsoon.
Also, the PWD, which had identified around 30 waterlogging-prone stretches, had claimed to install 1,000 pumps to drain out the water.
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