Times View

GURGAON: On Friday morning, a ham-handed trial led to a monster jam that stretched some 15 km from Gurgaon’s now non-existent Sirhaul toll plaza to Dhaula Kuan in Delhi, leaving lakhs of commuters stranded in their vehicles for several hours. The jam, which started around 7 in the morning, started clearing up only around 3 pm.Now, with the toll plaza gone, the Punjab and Haryana high court has ordered that the Delhi-Gurgaon expressway be eight-laned consistently; at present, it expands to 32 lanes where the toll plaza used to be. So, before the next court hearing on May 26, MCEPL, the firm that operates the expressway, chose a weekday morning to conduct a trial without informing cops or the public, by blocking off 24 lanes at the toll plaza, leading to what people called the “worst jam in Delhi’s history ”.Businessman Arun Gupta, who left Moti Bagh in Delhi at 9.45am, crawled along NH8 for over three hours to reach Dwarka at noon. Pawan Soni, a Gurgaon resident who had a meeting to attend in Delhi, said, “I covered one kilometre in one hour. I’ve never seen such traffic from Gurgaon to Delhi.” On the Gurgaon-Delhi carriageway , cars queued up from Rajokri to Shankar Chowk.Several commuters said it took them nearly five hours to reach Gurgaon from Delhi. Stranded in the unrelenting heat and gridlock, anger and scorn found a vent on Twitter. “Need to start keeping more snacks in my car,” tweeted Vipul Garg. “The most #organised #traffic #jam #nh8 #gurgaon #trafficpolice,” said a tweet from Shuchita.Snarls were reported on MG Road too as many took the alternative route, though they were not as bad.But Friday’s operation to reduce lane width was done without any coordination among government agencies, triggering a blame game at the end of the day. Gurgaon Police, whose perceived inefficiency was the subject of ridicule among commuters all day, issued a statement to say it was not to blame for the mess as it hadn’t been informed by the National Highways Authority of India. But the NHAI also said it wasn’t in the know and the exercise had been undertaken unilaterally by MCEPL, the firm that operates the expressway.Dalbir Singh, ACP (highway), told TOI the NHAI did not inform Gurgaon or Delhi Police about any such trial, so no policemen were deployed to manage traffic. When the traffic department came to know about the situation, around 15 cops, including the DCP (highway) rushed to Sirhaul. The gridlock started clearing up only after 3pm.Later in the afternoon, NHAI held a meeting with the traffic police and MCEPL. “We have instructed them to not conduct any such drive without consulting Delhi Police and Gurgaon Police. They have to notify traffic control room, the two police forces, make public announcements and put up signage informing commuters about the trial,” said Singh.MCEPL CEO S Raghuraman said, “The next hearing is on May 26 and the trial was conducted for the same. Now, we will have a meeting with NHAI, and the police following which we will make a public announcement of when we will do it next. But people will have to get used to the idea of lane driving.”When it takes five hours to cover a few kilometres on what is supposedly an expressway, one doesn’t have to be a rocket scientist to know that someone has messed up on a gigantic scale. Friday’s nightmare on NH8 must be put down to a complete lack of coordination between the various agencies involved. The Gurgaon police claim they were not informed that the width of the road at the site of the erstwhile toll plaza would be reduced to eight lanes on Friday. If true, that is gross negligence. Clearly a major change of this kind—narrowing the road from 32 lanes to eight at the spot—would lead to chaos unless the traffic was regulated by those trained to do so. We hope the mess is a one-off affair and better organization is on show come Monday, when the traffic will be back to its week-day peak.