People trying to leave early for Eid stuck in traffic jams

LAHORE: The traditional hustle and bustle associated with Eid, though at a lower level than last year, threw traffic out of gear on Wednesday.  Some people found themselves trapped in their vehicles for over three hours, especially on those roads leading to outstations.

Commuters found themselves caught in a bumper-to-bumper gridlock that spanned 3 to 4 kilometeres (kms) on several sections of the city. A distance of one km usually covered in two minutes now took one hour.  The traffic jams started after noon on a stretch of the canal, Do Moriya Pul, Gulberg’s Main Boulevard, Chungi Amer Sadhu, Ravi Road, Allama Iqbal Town Main Boulevard, GT Road, Maulana Shaukat Ali Road and Multan Road.  The situation only improved at night.

A Transport Department official, Mazhar Ali, told The Express Tribune that the volume of traffic had increased by 40 per cent.  He gave two reasons for this.

First, travel to districts outside Lahore to celebrate Eid with family, second, people heading to markets in anticipation of Chand Raat falling on Thursday. “A number of illegal parking stands have appeared around shopping centres. This spill over of parked vehicles onto roads means that only half the road is available for the traffic,” he added.

A senior traffic police official said that early closing hours of government offices and private institutions further put a load on traffic.

He said that the boom in private vehicle ownership along with trucks laden with goods for flood-hit areas had overburdened roads and led to traffic moving at a snails pace. As public and private vehicles got stuck on thoroughfares, The Mall, Jail Road, Kalma Chowk, Lorry Adda, Eik Moriya Pul, Lower Mall, Samanabad and Multan Road found themselves under heavy threat of traffic jams. Shahzad Bhatti, a trader at Liberty Market, said that buyers and window shoppers were finding it difficult to park due to the onslaught of traffic.

Khwaja Hammad, a Transport Department route permit official, said that a mass exodus had started and it would come to an end on Chand Raat as three million people headed out from the city to their homes outside Lahore.

“Anticipating the nuisance of travelling one or two days before Eid, some people actually left the city on Wednesday. This caused an extraordinary rush at bus stops and railway stations,” he said. Police superintendent (Cantt Circle) Imtiazur Rehman said that special arrangements to keep the flow of traffic normal had been made to facilitate people.  Patrolling had been increased and the number of deployments at busy junctions was strengthened, he added

Rehman said that he had visited the roads leading to Samanadbad, Thokar Niaz Baig, SherKot and Babu Sabu and found traffic movement as usual.

Published in The Express Tribune, September 9^th, 2010.