Underpass construction leads to traffic snarls on bypass road

Long traffic jams are witnessed daily near the bridge construction site at Vallah and vehicle underpass construction site on Loharka road with commuters having to wait in long queues for traffic to clear. At times, the queues of vehicles stranded in the traffic jam are over a kilometre long and people have to wait for at least 45 minutes for the traffic bottlenecks to clear.

The National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) is constructing a flyover at Vallah for the past over two years. As construction work has been going on at a snail’s pace, the residents are forced to go through the trouble daily.

The side-lanes provided along the construction site are too narrow for the heavy flow of traffic. To add to the woes of the commuters, the side-lanes have been badly damaged due to use by overloaded trucks with large potholes coming up.

At the vehicle underpass construction site too, work has been stalled for many months as the design was changed during the construction. “It has been a nightmare every day in the past two years for those who have to cross these two points on the bypass road,” said Joginder Singh, a daily commuter on the stretch.

The residents complained that no safety measures like warning signs and glow signs have been put up at the construction sites.

Residents of Vallah village and nearby localities have demanded that the NHAI should at least repair the side-lanes so that commuters do not face any inconvenience.

The stretch of the road is used by hundreds of vehicles coming to the international airport. With traffic jams becoming a frequent occurrence, the residents stated that work on the two projects should be completed at the earliest.

“Traffic snarls have become a routine affair on the bypass road. Many accidents have happened in the side-lanes in the past but the authorities concerned seem indifferent,” said another commuter Kewal Ram.