A bus accident coupled with heavy holiday traffic threw vehicular movement out of gear in Kochi on Saturday, causing huge snarls almost all the day.
Commuters heading towards offices and business establishments in the heart of the town had to wait for hours together to reach their destination. The ripple effects of the snarls were visible all across the city with serpentine queues going up to the suburbs of Kakkanad on the one side and up to Tripunithura on the other side.
The accident, in which a bus hit a metro pillar on the North overbridge, disrupted traffic in the heart of the city during the peak hour. Making things worse, a KSRTC bus broke down near the Goshree bridge, which affected the movement of vehicles on the western side.
Following this, vehicles took nearly an hour to reach the High Court junction from the Vallaparpadam junction, a journey which usually takes not more than 10 minutes. Logjams were reported from several locations including the Pipeline, Vyttila and Kadavanthra junctions.
The city’s internal roads mirrored the snarls on the major roads while irate commuters complained of absence of policemen on the roads that were already congested owing to the works on the metro rail.
“Considering the situation, I decided to walk from Palarivattom to Kaloor. I had a tough time nevertheless because most footpaths were occupied by two-wheelers. It is an absolutely no-pedestrian city’’, said Vivek G. Menon, a motorist.
“The accidents caused all the chaos. But only the flow of vehicles was slow. There was no traffic jam situation,’’ said K.S. Baby Vinod, Assistant Commissioner of Traffic.
According to him, there was a huge influx of vehicles to the city as people came out in droves for shopping on the second Saturday.
