Rakhi rush, rains tie traffic in knots

New Delhi: Festive rush, rains and breakdown of a number of DTC buses brought traffic in parts of the national capital to its knees on Monday.

Vehicles crawled on ma-jor arterial roads and int-ersections such as Dhaula Kuan, DND, National Highway 24 and ITO, a traffic police official said.

The roads leading to ITO, especially Vikas Marg, gave a hard time to commuters as they were stuck for long hours on the stretch.

A dead camel near Delhi Secretariat obstructed traffic along the ITO-Laxmi Nagar corridor, the Delhi Traffic tweeted.

Three Delhi Transport Corporation (DTC) buses, at Dhaula Kuan, Roshnara Road and Delhi Gate, suffered mechanical failures, causing tailbacks, the official said.

“Traffic is heavy in the carriageway from Bhopura Border towards Ghaziabad due to festival. Kindly avoid the stretch.

“Traffic is heavy in the carriageway from Peera Garhi towards Rohini due to festival. Kindly avoid the stretch,” said alerts put out by the Delhi traffic police on Twitter.

According to a senior officer, the traffic situation was bad between 11.30 am to 2 pm when the rains lashed across the national capital.

“The situation on major stretches was chaotic but after the rains, our personnel had a hard time managing traffic. Extra personnel were deployed but owing to waterlogging and encroachments on major roads commuters faced problems,” said the officer.  Some of the areas that witnessed long tailbacks included Shahdara, Seemapuri, the route bet-ween Akshardham Tem-ple and Maharani Bagh, Shastri Park etc., the officer added.

Although heavy showers offered much-needed respite from muggy weather conditions, it led to waterlogging and traffic snarls in several areas.

The weatherman has predicted overcast skies and a possibility of moderate to heavy rain at several places on Tuesday.