ISLAMABAD - Commuters, including office-goers, students and patients travelling between the twin cities on Monday experienced anguish due to traffic mess and road blockages at the Islamabad Expressway.
All the roads connecting the federal capital including the Expressway, Murree and Rawal roads towards Faizabad witnessed blockage due to early morning rain in the twin cities.
However, it was unfortunate that no official channel was available to communicate the roads condition to commuters. Most of the travellers relied on privately-established traffic groups to take guideline for reaching to their destinations.
Zaheer Ahmed working in a bank said, “I started my journey from Kakpul about 8 am and reached Blue Area about 10 am with delay of two hours due to traffic mess”.
He said that he had to rely on a social media group created by privately to take guideline to reach his destinations as no official channel was available to guide the commuters.
Another commuter Sabir Hussain said that he saw only one traffic personnel deployed at the PWD stop, while traffic on rest of the Expressway portion operated on their own. He said that it was unfortunate that Islamabad traffic police had no mechanism to deal with emergency like situation in the capital.
Numan Ahmed working in a private firm, travelling from Lalkurti to Zeropoint, said that the traffic mess forced him to avail an undesired leave as he failed to reach his destination on time.
When contacted, an official of Islamabad Traffic Police said that rain and VIP movement had created traffic mess at Expressway. He said that other reason of traffic mess at Expressway was motor bickers, who during rainfall take refuge under the main bridges, creating hurdle in smooth flow of traffic.
To a question, he said that traffic police had time and again written to Capital Development Authority about the road conditions from Gulberg to T-Chowk but the civic body paid no due attention towards the issue. A CDA official said that necessary work was underway from Koral to Rawat-section of the Expressway to ensure smooth flow of traffic there.
He said that the CDA had started work on improvement of protected U-Turns around PWD and Pakistan Town from its own resources as it was decided in a meeting chaired by the chairman CDA Amir Ali Ahmed to end the miseries of Expressway users.
The CDA chairman, he said, had directed that CDA engineering wing and traffic police to take a round of the area and propose interventions to be taken up on emergent basis for ease of traffic flow.
The interim arrangement including repair of the roads, removal of pot holes especially on shoulders would be carried out to ensure smooth flow of traffic on the Expressway.