Commuters in Kochi had a frustrating time on Thursday evening when city traffic came to a grinding halt during the peak hours.
The busy Vyttila Junction, where the construction of a flyover is in progress, was the worst affected as hundreds of motorists were held up along the stretch from Kundannoor to Vyttila for several hours.
The police attributed the traffic congestion to the construction work at Vyttila and said steps would be taken to dismantle all the remaining medians at the junction to ease the situation. According to them, the situation was worsened on Thursday due to a national conference taking place at a hotel near the Kundannoor Junction. The event was attended by nearly 6,000 delegates and the parking of vehicles posed a major hurdle, officials said.
Inside the city, traffic moved at snail’s pace since noon with workers of a political party pouring in to attend a party event.
Speaking on the issue, a top officer with the Kochi city police said the traffic gridlock on Thursday was a one-off case mainly due to the occurrence of a couple of major events and unauthorised parking. “Directions were issued to clear the congestion and traffic returned to normalcy in a couple of hours,” the officer claimed.
