Returning revellers clog capital’s highways

Margalla Road, Kashmir Highway witness miles-long queues of cars

ISLAMABAD: As the 15,000 tourists who visited the hill stations over the Eidul Fitr holidays embarked on the return journey home, it caused a massive log jam in the capital on Wednesday.

The queue of cars stretched for miles on Murree Road and Kashmir Highways.

According to officials, over 15,000 tourists had visited the Murree and Galiyat hill stations during the Eid holidays.

With most of the visitors coming from outside of Islamabad, as a result of the Islamabad Highway also saw heavy traffic.

With rain on the third day of Eid turning the weather pleasant, a large number of people headed towards the picnic spots in the capital including Daman-e-Koh, Pir Sohawa causing heavy congestion on Margalla Road.

The issue was exacerbated with traffic returning from other hill stations including Naran and Kaghan.

Traffic police officials, however, told The Express Tribune that the road conditions were ‘under control’ though there was some disturbance in the traffic flow on Murree Road leading
to the Rawal Lake View Park near Bani Gala.

“We made our utmost efforts to ensure smooth flow of traffic on every single road of the capital starting from the eve of Eid and all through the holidays,” said Islamabad Traffic Police Spokesperson Sajjad.

He added that the ITP officials were divided into various squads such as one squad were there to look after one wheeling keep a check on public transport for over loading among others.

Published in The Express Tribune, June 29^th, 2017.