Traffic snarls turning into nightmare in Hyderabad’s Gachibowli

Traffic snarls are turning into a nightmare at several points of Gachibowli on Old Mumbai Highway

Hyderabad: Every inch is a painful struggle. And the pace at which vehicles move at times here, surely would have a snail crawl past with a chuckle.

Each morning unveils nightmarish traffic snarls at several points of a happening Gachibowli on the Old Mumbai Highway. Some stretches like the one between TCS Synergy Park campus and the junction leading to the ISB campus, and Raidurgam road throw up chaos with scores of vehicles struggling to wend their way out of the jam.

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From bicycles and two-wheeler to cars, auto-rickshaws and buses, the road stretch during the mornings and evenings in particular gets choked with vehicles. Vehicles coming from the stadium side and heading towards the Gachibowli flyover and those coming from the DLF road and intending to go towards the ISB campus road and further down to Q City, end up getting caught in a vicious jam.

Gachibowli and its vicinities — right from Madhapur to Nanakramguda — are home to scores of leading IT and ITES companies, apart from a host of other bustling businesses. A majority of their workforce end up traversing these busy IT corridors to reach their workplace and end up in long traffic snarls.

“It’s too chaotic in the morning between 9 am and 11 am. For what should be a two- to three-minute drive, we end up spending 15 minutes to 20 minutes at times,” laments Jyoti, a techie who drives her two-wheeler to work.

A major conflict point is the steady stream of vehicles from the DLF road heading towards the ISB road as they cut through the continuously flowing vehicular movement from the stadium towards the city. The traffic cops are conspicuous by their absence most of the time but as another techie and regular user of the road stretch, Ashim, points out, they could be helpless too. “At times, cops are here at the police station point but given the number of vehicles, they, too, just struggle to streamline the traffic,” he says.

Lack of discipline on the part of the motorists is also blamed for the situation that unfolds on this road stretch. Pointing out the absence of lane discipline, a young motorist, Rajeshwar says, “Cars occupy the entire road in four lanes. Where should we bikers and others drive?”

Compounding the chaos, drivers of RTC buses seek to weave through the traffic dangerously and, at times, go to the extreme left corner to overtake the two and four-wheelers. “They keep honking and breathing down on us to move forward in the traffic jam. At times, it makes me nervous with buses stopping so close to my scooty,” says Aishwarya Jain, a student.