“It’s Friday, it’s Christmas and it’s all about fun, family and food so the traffic snarls in Delhi-NCR can at least be ignored for a day when you have other reasons to be happy,” said a 32-year-old man stuck in traffic at South Delhi’s BRT corridor.
On Friday, when Delhi lit up in the colors of Santa, Delhiites faced major traffic snarls in Delhi’s heart — Connaught Place (CP) and South Delhi’s Saket area near Select City Walk Mall. “Usually it takes hardly five to seven minutes to reach the Hanuman Mandir from CP’s Outer Circle but on Friday it took more than half an hour due to heavy traffic jam,” said Heena Kapoor who went to CP to celebrate Christmas.
Other areas affected were Ashoka Road, Kalibari Road, Baba Kharak Singh Marg, Preet Vihar, BRT Corridor, Nehru Place, Malviya Nagar, Tagore Garden, Janakpuri and Rithala.
From almost a decade, with people living in Delhi having adapted Western culture and celebrating all festivals and occasions with equality, the trend to spend the evening with friends and family at shopping malls, cafes, restaurants have also increased. As a result, on special occasions like Christmas when malls, shops, food-joints, cafe houses are decorated and offer you attractive deals, the number of visitors also increases.
On these special occasions a large number of people use their cars to reach places like Select City Wall in South Delhi’s Saket area, restaurants and bars in Connaught Place, Ambience Mall on Delhi-Gurgaon Road, Great India Palace Mall in Noida and Shipra Mall in Indrapuram-Ghaziabad. “The sudden rise in the volume of the vehicles causes heavy traffic snarls near the red light signals and other parking areas. The major affected areas are the connected roads near the malls,” said a traffic police official.
Though, prior arrangements were made by the traffic department for the smooth movement of the vehicles, it was still difficult to control the traffic movements in the aforementioned areas.