Gurgaon: Nearly 500 distress calls poured into Gurgaon traffic police helplines between 6pm and 8pm on Tuesday as thousands of commuters were trapped in waterlogged roads and gridlock following the season’s first heavy monsoon spell. Traffic personnel recovered around 70 stranded vehicles, nearly 40 of which had broken down in the middle of roads, worsening congestion on already choked stretches.Callers to helplines 1095 and 2386000 mostly sought updates on traffic movement, alternative routes, or urgent assistance after their vehicles stalled on flooded stretches.Several vehicles, including two school buses, got stuck in muddy roadside patches near Mor Chowk on the Civil Lines-Jharsa stretch after rainwater weakened the shoulders. Breakdowns were also reported at multiple locations: a Tata Ace near Narsingpur, a tempo traveller and a pickup truck at Hero Honda Chowk, a milk truck on Sidhrawali flyover, and a truck near Bhishma Temple in Manesar.The heaviest congestion was recorded on Delhi-Gurgaon Expressway (NH-48), Golf Course Road, MG Road, IFFCO Chowk and Rajeev Chowk, while severe waterlogging near Bilaspur Chowk — compounded by ongoing NHAI flyover construction and rain-filled potholes — further slowed traffic. Other trouble spots included Mayfield Garden, Kanhai Chowk, Artemis Ambedkar Chowk, Artemis T-Point, AIT Chowk, Subhash Chowk, Tikri Chowk, Unitech Cyber Park, South City-2, Medanta, both carriageways of Narsingpur, PASCO red light, Udyog Vihar, Kadipur village, Pataudi Chowk, the Hero Honda Chowk-Himgiri Chowk stretch and Sheetla Mata Mandir.Matters worsened on NH-48 after a section of the carriageway near Narsingpur caved in, forcing the closure of two lanes towards Jaipur during peak evening hours. With nearly 3 lakh vehicles using the expressway daily, the cave-in combined with waterlogging slowed traffic sharply — from the usual 60-70 kmph to around 30 kmph. “Traffic kept moving, so there was congestion, but it did not come to a complete standstill anywhere. Our teams remained on the ground till the early hours of Wednesday to keep traffic moving and facilitate repair work,” said ACP (traffic highways) Satyapal Yadav.To ease congestion, police created three diversions on Tuesday: Delhi-bound traffic headed to Jaipur was redirected onto Dwarka Expressway near Mahipalpur, while motorists at Rajeev Chowk and Hero Honda Chowk were sent via Sohna Road and Southern Peripheral Road. Cops also pushed and pulled stranded vehicles out of the way, using cranes and hydras to clear muddy and inundated stretches.A day after the gridlock, police stepped up monsoon preparedness by deploying 260 additional personnel, taking the traffic wing’s field strength from around 1,250 to nearly 1,500. The reinforcements will work round the clock, including night shifts, to tackle waterlogging and speed up restoration of traffic flow. Seventeen motorcycle patrol teams, six police vehicles, five cranes, two hydras and an ambulance have also been deployed for rapid emergency response.Following Tuesday’s chaos, traffic police restricted the entry of auto-rickshaws, e-rickshaws and two-wheelers on NH-48 during Wednesday’s peak hours to ease congestion.Traffic volume on Wednesday was comparatively lighter, after local police advised companies to allow employees to work from home. Still, several stretches — including Sukhrali-Mehrauli road towards Sector 14 and Gurgaon City police station, Old Delhi road, Sheetla Mata Mandir road and Bilaspur — remained submerged, underscoring the city’s continuing struggle with poor drainage and inadequate monsoon infrastructure. Civic authorities and police worked late into the night to repair the road cave-in at Narsingpur, though congestion persisted on the stretch through the following day.
