Newton Sequeira| Updated: Nov 5, 2016, 12.34 AM IST
Panaji: A monstrous gridlock along the Porvorim-Panaji route left commuters hassled and disrupted office-goers’ schedule for the third day in a row, on Friday.
Four vehicular accidents in the morning along with an increase in the number of tourist vehicles led to a traffic snarl that continued till early Friday afternoon. The serpentine queue of vehicles stretched from Goa Board of Secondary and Higher Education up to both Mandovi bridges, and the usually short drive turned into a three-hour long delay
Trouble began early morning, just as commuters began their journey to office, after a two-wheeler slammed into another vehicle on the old Mandovi bridge. In a bid to clear traffic, the traffic cell diverted traffic from Porvorim onto the new Mandovi bridge.
The traffic jam was aggravated by two other minor accidents and a breakdown.
“There was a breakdown due to the heat. The road width has also become less than half and the influx of tourist vehicles means that there is too much volume of traffic on a smaller road,” superintendent of Police Traffic Suman Goyal said.
Some commuters took the internal Porvorim roads to avoid the jam, but it did not help the situation as eventually they converged at the bottleneck near the Journalist Colony. Several locals tried to avoid the Porvorim-Panaji route by taking the Betimroute, but still found themselves stuck at the bottleneck near the two bridges.
“Even 2pm feels like everyday 6:30pm with this traffic! High time something is done to control the outside tourist buses and cars that are entering Goa,” motorist Vivian John DeSouza said.
Heavy rush was also seen at the Betim-Panaji ferry as commuters opted for the ferry instead of getting caught up in the jam. Thanks to some foresight, the river navigation department pressed two additional ferries into service.
An official at secretariat complained that it took him 40 minutes to reach secretariat from his Porvorim residence. "Traffic management is not being done properly. I see it as a traffic management problem more than anything else, though sometimes motorists too, jump rules to race ahead of others," he said.
People took to social media to express their ire. While some vented their fury, others took to pleading with God and the chief minister to help resolve the logjam. “Heavy traffic jam in Porvorim. Stuck for 20 mins now, plz help,” tweeted Sidharth Naik to chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar.
Deputy superintendent of police (Traffic) North Goa Dharmesh Angle, despite being on leave, was monitoring the situation. Angle told TOI that several precautionary measures had been taken to reduce the traffic congestion.
“Because of the heavy flow of traffic, it took some time to clear the accidents. By the time we cleared the accident site, there was a backlog of traffic. This happened during the peak time so there was a delay in normalcy returning to traffic movement. As a pre-emptive measure we have diverted traffic at Karaswada junction and Banastarim. We will continue the diversions till Monday and watch how the situation pans out. To resolve the traffic, the gurdwara road was made one way. Both bridges were also made one ways temporarily,” Angle said.
Though a handful of police officials tried to bring order to chaos, most Goans were convinced that the traffic police had lost the plot and had failed to manage traffic effectively. “Where are the intelligent people of Goa who think they can take care of Goa. Please come and solve this traffic problem because the police can’t,” a commuter said.
“I think it's faster to reach Mumbai than to go to Porvorim and come back home!!! The cops need help!!,” Priya Gupta said.
Four vehicular accidents in the morning along with an increase in the number of tourist vehicles led to a traffic snarl that continued till early Friday afternoon. The serpentine queue of vehicles stretched from Goa Board of Secondary and Higher Education up to both Mandovi bridges, and the usually short drive turned into a three-hour long delay
Trouble began early morning, just as commuters began their journey to office, after a two-wheeler slammed into another vehicle on the old Mandovi bridge. In a bid to clear traffic, the traffic cell diverted traffic from Porvorim onto the new Mandovi bridge.
The traffic jam was aggravated by two other minor accidents and a breakdown.
“There was a breakdown due to the heat. The road width has also become less than half and the influx of tourist vehicles means that there is too much volume of traffic on a smaller road,” superintendent of Police Traffic Suman Goyal said.
Some commuters took the internal Porvorim roads to avoid the jam, but it did not help the situation as eventually they converged at the bottleneck near the Journalist Colony. Several locals tried to avoid the Porvorim-Panaji route by taking the Betimroute, but still found themselves stuck at the bottleneck near the two bridges.
“Even 2pm feels like everyday 6:30pm with this traffic! High time something is done to control the outside tourist buses and cars that are entering Goa,” motorist Vivian John DeSouza said.
Heavy rush was also seen at the Betim-Panaji ferry as commuters opted for the ferry instead of getting caught up in the jam. Thanks to some foresight, the river navigation department pressed two additional ferries into service.
An official at secretariat complained that it took him 40 minutes to reach secretariat from his Porvorim residence. "Traffic management is not being done properly. I see it as a traffic management problem more than anything else, though sometimes motorists too, jump rules to race ahead of others," he said.
People took to social media to express their ire. While some vented their fury, others took to pleading with God and the chief minister to help resolve the logjam. “Heavy traffic jam in Porvorim. Stuck for 20 mins now, plz help,” tweeted Sidharth Naik to chief minister Laxmikant Parsekar.
Deputy superintendent of police (Traffic) North Goa Dharmesh Angle, despite being on leave, was monitoring the situation. Angle told TOI that several precautionary measures had been taken to reduce the traffic congestion.
“Because of the heavy flow of traffic, it took some time to clear the accidents. By the time we cleared the accident site, there was a backlog of traffic. This happened during the peak time so there was a delay in normalcy returning to traffic movement. As a pre-emptive measure we have diverted traffic at Karaswada junction and Banastarim. We will continue the diversions till Monday and watch how the situation pans out. To resolve the traffic, the gurdwara road was made one way. Both bridges were also made one ways temporarily,” Angle said.
Though a handful of police officials tried to bring order to chaos, most Goans were convinced that the traffic police had lost the plot and had failed to manage traffic effectively. “Where are the intelligent people of Goa who think they can take care of Goa. Please come and solve this traffic problem because the police can’t,” a commuter said.
“I think it's faster to reach Mumbai than to go to Porvorim and come back home!!! The cops need help!!,” Priya Gupta said.
No comments:
Post a Comment