Mayhem on E-way

Monday, Feb 21, 2011




Even though there was a lot of confusion among commuters on Monday, the traffic police claimed that they have no plans to shelve the new arrangement for the Cyber City area.

On Monday, the first working day since the trials started, motorists coming from Delhi complained that it took more time than usual to cross the toll plaza. According to them, the private concessionaire deliberately delayed the process of issuing toll slips. Further, a great number of vehicles bound for the DLF Phase-III road now have to take a U-turn near the toll plaza, impeding the flow at the gates. "Widening the service road near Ambience Mall would have been a better measure than implementing a new flow plan," Ashish Malik, a commuter offered.

Although the traffic authorities have taken the sensible measure of removing the signals at Shankar Chowk for the traffic flowing in from Udyog Vihar, and blocked the Udyog Vihar-Cyber City crossing to avoid the chaos, the volume of traffic on the slip roads still remain the same. "The problem will remain until you do something to reduce the traffic volume on the service roads," said Bhawani Shankar Tripathy of a local NGO.

Corroborating the claims, joint CP Alok Mittal said: "The reason why there were some jams was because people were not very sure about the turns and kept halting to seek directions," said Mittal.

However, the new traffic plan seemed to have found no takers among commuters on Monday. "It was very confusing for commuters coming from Udyog Vihar since they now have to take a compulsory left turn from Shankar Chowk and a U-turn almost immediately to reach Cyber City and IFFCO Chowk. The signage indicating this should be ideally on the right side and not on the left as it is in this case. Also, since the Cyber City stretch has been made one-way now, the existing median should be removed in order to facilitate direct access to various offices located in Infinity Tower," said Rajesh Kumar, who works there. The authorities, however, said that the median will be removed in the coming days and more signages will be put up.

Original news source http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/gurgaon/Morning-Mayhem/articleshow/7542413.cms