Commuters travelling between Noida and Delhi faced long snarls on Monday morning as a truck loaded with sand broke down a little before the Okhla police chowki in Delhi, the police said. Authorities managed to remove the truck only around 1 p.m.
As the Delhi Traffic Police could not send its crane for the removal of the truck from the area due to vehicles lining up behind the truck, Noida Traffic Police dispatched one. However, it took a herculean effort to move it as the axle had broken and the truck was loaded with sand.
Since around 9 a.m. on Monday, traffic movement from Mayur Vihar to Noida was badly affected due to the incident. There was a huge traffic jam from Mayur Vihar till Maha Maya Flyover in Noida. Commuters travelling from Noida and Greater Noida took almost double the time to cross the stretch of the main road towards Delhi passing by Rashtriya Dalit Prerna Sthal and Film City. The stretch from near Rashtriya Dalit Prerna Sthal till New Ashok Nagar in Delhi saw slow vehicular traffic till afternoon on Monday.
Similarly, commuters travelling via the Maha Maya Flyover-Kalindi Kunj route, passed hours in their vehicles as this stretch also witnessed slow traffic near the upcoming Sector 94 police station. A diversion of vehicles further slowed down on Shahdara bridge.
Noida Traffic Police Inspector V.S. Chauhan confirmed that the axle of the truck had broken. “It could not be removed easily as it was heavily loaded. By the time the police removed the truck from the road, traffic jam had spilled on both the carriageways of Maha Maya flyover,” he said.
Aditya, a resident of Delhi’s Mayur Vihar, said he was travelling to Agra and had reached only a few kilometres when he got stuck in the jam. “The vehicles had lined up to as far as 3-4 km. It was much later that we got to know the reason. There was no policemen to streamline the traffic. Finally, we had to give up and cancel our plan,” he said.
Akash Kumar, another commuter who was going towards Greater Noida from Noida Sector 18, said he was stuck near Sector 44 for hours. “It took almost two hours to get out of trap of the huge snarl,” he said.
