Around six hours of recurring traffic snarls extending up to a kilometre on both sides of the Sohna carriageways, occurred on Friday due to a leakage in the water supply pipelines along the main Gujjar Road in Sector 66, traffic police officials and commuters said.
The congestion began at around 8am when vehicle movement increased on the expressway was caused by leakage which occurred at around 7.30am during utility shifting work carried out by the Gurugram Metropolitan Development Authority (GMDA), resulting in ankle-deep waterlogged stretches at the intersection, said officials aware of the matter.
A spot check by HT on Friday at around 11,30 am, found restricted vehicle movement and prolonged wait for commuters as they navigate the stretch connecting Sector 66 main road to Sohna Expressway. While traffic police had heavily barricaded the stretches where the repair work was going on, manual enforcement was also seen to ensure smooth movement of vehicles.
According to traffic police officials, the leakage and waterlogging had already begun at around 7.30am, before they arrived at the spot. “Barricades were immediately extended to stop the congestion and restrict movement through the single merging point on Sohna Road and further to avoid any long jams,” a traffic police enforcement official said, requesting anonymity.
Aditya Singh, 29, a daily commuter, said a long queue of vehicles was piling up on a 1km stretch from a private memorial hospital to a Government Boys Senior Secondary School on the Sohna Expressway. “Issues with water pipelines could have been resolved during the late night when traffic movement is slow,” Singh said.
Another commuter, Maha Dev, 23, added that waterlogging and no-parking violations on the Sohna Expressway worsened the situation. “While water had already affected the free flow of vehicles, wrongful parking narrowed down the width of the road, contributing to congestion,” Dev said.
A senior official from GMDA, who wished not to be named, said the work involved connecting a higher-capacity trunk water supply line to the existing distribution network to prevent shortages at societies and improve flow in the area. “The alignment of certain pipeline segments was also modified on an urgent basis owing to land availability and affected water supplies in the vicinity, with leakages likely to be restored within a day,” the official said.
Contractors present on the site said disruptions related to water supplies had been reported at several nearby societies for almost a week.
Denying that a pipeline burst during shifting work, a contractor said, “Waterlogging resulted from the release of trapped water during modification and pressure build-up in the network.”
Traffic police officials said congestion was cleared after 12.30pm and that their teams frequently issue challans for illegal parking during inspections.
