By IANS,
New Delhi : Incessant rain for the past 36 hours spelled chaos for Delhi Friday, with traffic crawling at a speed of two kilometres per hour at several places.
Intermittent rain, one of the heaviest this season, once again caused the same disturbing scenes which were played out again and again – flooding in low-lying areas, uprooted trees, dysfunctional traffic lights, traffic snarls, harried commuters and scared school children who were caught up for hours on end on chaotic roads.
The chaos once again showed the lack of preparedness of civic authorities to restore normalcy to Delhi’s roads as the heavy rainfall disrupted normal life.
Commuters who set off for their offices in the morning had to battle waterlogged roads, non-functional traffic signals, vehicle breakdowns and serpentine queues of cars, buses, two-wheelers and auto-rickshaws. Disorder reigned on the streets almost throughout the morning.
The roads that were most affected were Ring Road, one of the city’s life lines, the Dhaula Kuan crossing and the Delhi-Noida Expressway.
“It took me three hours 45 minutes to cover a distance of eight kilometres from my home in Palam (west Delhi) to my office in R.K. Puram in a car,” said Nishant Sharma.
On Thursday, Delhi recorded 112 mm of rain, the heaviest rainfall of the month.