SHIMLA: Shimla has virtually come to a standstill, with bumper-to-bumper traffic stretching from Shoghi to Dhalli in eastern reaches of the city, as weekend tourist rush collides with road tarring work being undertaken during peak hours.
For thousands of commuters and tourists, a journey of barely five kilometres is taking up to three hours. Vehicles are moving at a crawl or not moving at all, leaving passengers stranded in buses, taxis and private cars.
Frustrated passengers have begun abandoning buses and walking to their destinations mainly in Dhalli area after vehicles remained stuck for hours.
The traffic chaos has also disrupted people travelling out of Shimla to Chandigarh and onward for flights and train journeys. Meetings, appointments and holiday plans have been thrown into uncertainty as travellers struggle to get through the city.
What has aggravated the crisis is the decision to undertake tarring patch work during the weekend, when Shimla witnesses a sharp surge in tourist traffic.
With two consecutive holidays, the inflow from Chandigarh, Punjab, Haryana, Delhi and neighbouring areas has multiplied several times, putting an already stretched road network under enormous pressure.
Instead of anticipating the weekend rush and scheduling the work during off-peak hours, the Himachal Pradesh Public Works Department and agencies associated with the Shimla Municipal Corporation went ahead with road work during the busiest period.
The decision has come under intense criticism as traffic police and the local administration appear to have failed to adequately manage the additional load or prevent road work from worsening an already fragile traffic situation.
The most glaring question is why such work was not postponed until the holiday rush subsided or restricted to night and off-peak hours.
Even as traffic remained virtually paralysed, the road work continued, adding another bottleneck to the city's already congested road network.
The crisis has put the functioning of the PWD, traffic police, Shimla Municipal Corporation and local administration under fire.
The authorities were expected to anticipate the predictable weekend tourist surge and coordinate road works accordingly.
Instead, Shimla's residents and visitors have been left paying the price of poor planning, with thousands spending hours trapped on roads that should have been kept moving during the holiday rush.
The administration now faces the immediate task of clearing the gridlock and explaining why major road work was allowed to continue during a period when a massive increase in traffic was entirely foreseeable.
The situation eased out in late night hours
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