New Delhi: Barapullah Phase-III is testing Delhiites’ patience to the limit. The daily crawl is getting on their nerves, with frustrated commuters repeatedly tagging traffic police while asking for a fix.Traffic officers have started responding to the barrage of complaints, tweet by tweet, explaining why the bottleneck keeps choking up traffic. Their explanation, however, seems to be offering little comfort. The problem is structural, and there is no definite long-term solution in place yet.The chaos started almost immediately after Phase III opened Sept 29. Hundreds of motorists entered the corridor believing in the promised 15-minute journey between Mayur Vihar Phase-1 and INA. Instead, many found themselves crawling for an hour or even two. The corridor went from inauguration mode to investigation mode in barely a week.The question doing the rounds is rather uncomfortable: How did the squeeze become obvious only after the traffic started flowing in real time?Since last week, social media has turned into a running complaint box. A commuter posted on Monday that someone who started later than him and took National Highway-24 reached the destination before him, while he remained stuck on Barapullah for 60 to 65 minutes.Another said the stretch was at a standstill for an hour and wondered why a traffic cop was not manning the clogged zone, pointing out that even ambulances were stuck.This time, traffic police responded directly, explaining the reasons behind the snarl, tweet by tweet. They said men in uniform were present at merging points and were regulating traffic, while blaming an unlikely ‘culprit’: Google Maps. According to them, the app was not reflecting the live congestion and continued showing the route as ‘green’, encouraging more motorists to enter a stretch that was already brimming with vehicles.The most telling response came when traffic police issued an advisory asking motorists to avoid the corridor. It said traffic towards Barapullah/Ring Road was heavy and slow and that motorists should instead use alternative routes towards NH-24/DND Flyway. Traffic from Phase-III was also being diverted towards NH-24/DND to ease the pressure at Barapullah junction.In effect, the immediate solution to a problem dogging a newly opened corridor is: Don’t use it. The road took nearly 12 years to materialise; the bottleneck, no time to reveal itself. Sadly, for commuters stuck in the daily crawl on the elevated stretch, there is no definite fix in place.
