Gurgaon: Commuters remained stranded for nearly three hours on Tuesday evening as showers, waterlogging, peak-hour traffic and diversions for kanwar yatra combined to bring traffic to a crawl on Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway, Gurgaon-Sohna highway and choked Ambience Mall underpass.Traffic police said waterlogging at several parts of the city and on the Delhi side of the expressway, particularly near Dwarka tunnel, disrupted traffic flow and triggered a cascading gridlock across the city.Commuters said congestion had begun building up even before the evening showers, with vehicles taking over 30 minutes to negotiate Ambience Mall underpass in the afternoon because of traffic diversions for kanwar yatra.As rain intensified during the evening peak rush, traffic took a further hit at the usual pain points — Udyog Vihar, Cyber City, Shankar Chowk, MG Road, IFFCO Chowk and Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway.“I left my office at DLF Cyber Park around 5 pm and reached Ambience Mall underpass in five minutes. That’s where the nightmare began,” said Rashi Bhakhri, an employee at a multinational company. “It took exactly two hours just to get out of the waterlogged underpass. There was nowhere to move, there was no phone network inside, and rainwater kept dripping onto vehicles from above. Even after exiting, it took another 20 minutes to cross the DLF Downtown stretch, which is hardly 100 metres away. I finally reached home after three hours,” she said.The gridlock also sent app-based cab fares soaring. Several commuters took to social media to share screenshots showing fares surging during the evening rush, with a ride from Udyog Vihar to Dwarka Sector 1 jumping from its usual Rs 350 to nearly Rs 1,300.Smriti Chauhan, a banker who opted for her office shuttle to avoid the surge pricing, found little respite. “It usually takes five to seven minutes to reach DLF Cyber Park from Atlas Chowk in the office shuttle. On Tuesday, it took one-and-a-half hours to cover the same distance. The entire stretch was a sea of red, completely choked as vehicles simply did not move,” she said.By late evening, the traffic jam had spread with IFFCO Chowk seeing long queues of cars, buses, trucks and auto-rickshaws crawling at 10.15 pm. Waterlogging narrowed the carriageway, creating bottlenecks that left thousands of commuters stranded. Authorities deployed pumps to drain the water, but with little immediate impact. An ambulance was also stranded at the intersection as autos, e-rickshaws and taxis blocked the carriageway. Photos shared on social media showed traffic personnel struggling to clear the path.Shivani, a resident of Sector 56, said every spell of rain exposed the city’s poor drainage and traffic management. “Today, it took me an hour to reach Shankar Chowk from my office in Udyog Vihar Phase 3. It’s normally a five-minute drive. Traffic moved at a snail’s pace. Things became normal only after I crossed Shankar Chowk and headed towards Golf Course Road,” she said.Traffic police attributed the widespread congestion to waterlogging at several locations, including Udyog Vihar, Dhundahera, Kapashera, Old Delhi-Gurgaon Road and MG Road, along with heavy traffic spillover from the Delhi side of the expressway. “Waterlogging near Dwarka tunnel on both sides of the expressway caused traffic to pile up. Since there was waterlogging in several parts of Gurgaon, traffic movement was severely affected across these stretches,” a senior traffic police officer said. Cops were deployed at the usual congestion hotspots, including Shankar Chowk, IFFCO Chowk and Rajiv Chowk, to regulate traffic and divert vehicles from waterlogged stretches.
