Dual blow of a vehicle getting stalled on AJC Bose Road flyover and a collision involving three vehicles on the link between Parama and AJC Bose Road flyovers accompanied by high volume of school traffic on the roads below, caused severe traffic congestion on the two connected flyovers in the city on Tuesday.
Daily commuters said snarls on the Parama flyover is a daily phenomenon. It takes about twenty minutes to reach the Race Course crossing from Silver Spring on EM Bypass.
Tuesday was no different, said a Salt Lake resident. “I took the Parama flyover near Silver Spring on the Bypass and got at the Race Course crossing after 20 minutes,” he said.
Had traffic been normal it should have taken less than 10 minutes to cross both Parama flyover and AJC Bose Road flyovers. Police officers stated huge volume of vehicles taking the Parama flyover to reach Dalhousie and the schools around Minto Park giving over in the afternoon as factors leading to such congestion.
On Tuesday, they pointed out a collision between three vehicles and a stalled car for the snarl.
“An app cab developed a snag and stalled on the Maidan bound flank of the AJC Bose Road flyover, above the Exide crossing,” said a police officer.
“This vehicle blocked one flank. A breakdown van came from the Park Circus five-point crossing, which was nearly 2km from the flyover. The breakdown van moved behind the long queue of vehicles already stuck in the snarl. It took several minutes to finally remove the vehicle. In the meantime more vehicles were adding to the queue,” the police officer said.
“This gave rise to a long queue of vehicles till the Parama flyover,” said the officer.
Another police officer said that around the same time three vehicles collided on the link between the Parama flyover and the AJC Bose Road flyover. This too led to snarls as the vehicles left the stretch after several minutes.
Daily commuters as well as police officers said that snarls on the stretch of AJC Bose Road, between Park Circus seven-point crossing and Minto Park, was common every afternoon when the schools in the area gave over.
Snarls are also common in the morning but the impact is lesser than that in the afternoon as the volume of other vehicles is far less in the morning when the schools start for the day.
“I was travelling between Sealdah and Deshapriya Park on Tuesday morning. There was a snarl on the stretch of APC Road, from its intersection with Shakespeare Sarani and the Beckbagan crossing,” said a resident of south Calcutta.
In 2023, Kolkata Police had urged commuters to take Park Street to reach central Calcutta from the east of the city to decongest the flyovers.
Several police officers had told this newspaper then that a study found a majority of cars from the Bypass prefer plying through Parama and AJC Bose Road flyovers to reach Esplanade and the Dalhousie. As a result, snarls are quite common on that route, especially during rush hours.
“Park Street still remains underutilised as almost everyone wants to take the flyovers,” a police officer said on Tuesday.